Eye of the Storm

by Peter Ratcliffe

  Just at that moment Mugger came up to report that the charges were in position. At once I shouted across to Pat, ‘OK. Let’s go.’ With a roar of engines our convoy – eight 110s, three motorbikes and the Unimog support vehicle – moved out, leaving behind a more or less serviceable Gaz and three very dead Iraqi officers.

  In my Land Rover there wasn’t a lot of chat. Mugger, driving over difficult terrain without lights, needed all his concentration to follow the vehicle ahead and keep an eye out for rocks and holes, and the third member of the crew, our rear gunner, Harry, couldn’t really make him-self heard over the din. I was preoccupied with the task ahead of me, endlessly turning over in my mind the problems we faced. There were some positive aspects. Temporarily, at any rate, the men’s spirits had been lifted by the arrival of the burnouses. But I knew that, in terms of morale, it was going to take a lot more than a few warm goatskin overcoats to put this unit back in top shape. In addition, Des’s comments had unsettled me far more than I was prepared to admit. The morale in this unit seemed to be right on the floor. The men’s pride and confidence – even, I was to learn, their basic belief in the Regiment – had taken a hell of a drubbing. Most of them were really positive guys and were champing at the bit, but had found their leader’s indecision very frustrating. It was up to me to raise their spirits and get the patrol operating professionally and effectively.

  Still, I wasn’t out there for a picnic, I told myself, or for a touring holiday of Iraq. I had been sent in by the CO to sort things out, and that’s what I intended to do, no matter how many feathers I ruffled.

  As well as now being the half-squadron’s OC, I was also the commander of one of its two sub-units, Alpha One Zero. Because of the way the patrol was divided, I knew that I would tend to use the guys in my own section for the most difficult and dangerous tasks ahead. As a result, Alpha Two Zero was destined to play a supporting role throughout the time we were behind enemy lines, which in turn meant that they would not have the opportunity for either virtuosity or glory, and the kudos that goes with both. This was probably very unfair on those among them who were first-class soldiers, but it was a natural result of my commanding one of the subunits, as well the entire patrol.

  Alpha Two Zero was led by Staff Sergeant Pat, albeit under my overall control. However, my decision to ride roughshod over everybody and to take all the command decisions myself, made clear by the way I had spoken to Pat, meant that I would not be seeking much advice from my 2IC. That, I felt, was the mistake the previous OC had made. He had initially solicited the views of most of the sergeants, and when he discovered which of them advocated the course he himself wanted to adopt he concentrated just on them – and principally on Pat. Des, whom I knew to be extremely positive in his manner and outlook, had clearly not been telling the patrol commander what he wanted to hear. Des would have wanted to forge ahead and get to grips with the mission and, if needs be, with the enemy. His OC’s inclination had been to hold back.

  I was also not an advocate of so-called ‘Chinese parliaments’ – meetings at which everyone chips in until a decision is reached – about which so many books on the SAS have made such a lot of noise. Indeed, it’s possible to get the impression from some of these memoirs that command of 22 SAS relies on a democratic process in which the opinions of the lowest trooper have equal weight with those of senior officers and NCOs. True, some commanders believe in consulting all their senior ranks before making a decision, and by tradition these heads of section get together for their conflabs in what is called the ‘headshed’. (Which is why the commanders of units and sub-units, from the CO and his HQ staff at Hereford downwards, are known as headsheds.)

  Don’t mistake me: I have never been against constructive ideas – people throwing in positive suggestions that will help an already formalized plan to work more efficiently. But in my opinion these Chinese parliaments are largely a waste of time, tending merely to provide an opportunity for the waverers to be negative and for others to voice unwanted opinions, both of which more often confuse rather than help matters.

  Every commander should take all the relevant factors into account and find ways to work with or around them – not use them as excuses to abort. The commander is there to command – in essence, to tell the other guys what to do. Otherwise you end up with people all voicing their opinions at once, and often getting into heated discussions which can easily turn into arguments, or worse. Everyone feels he has a right to add his twopenn’orth and you get absolutely nowhere, one of the many reasons why I was not going to adopt the system in Alpha One Zero.

  I intended to go in hard from the outset. The men might not agree with my tactics, but that didn’t matter. Only then would the patrol begin to come together and start doing its job properly, rather than swanning around and withdrawing the moment someone raised his voice to say that something was too difficult or risky. After days of inaction, I had been sent in to grab the patrol by the scruff of the neck and set it back on course. Given that situation, I was the Boss – the RSM – and these guys knew that I had a reputation as a hard-liner. It was the only way I knew of getting things back to normal SAS operating level.

  I knew, too, that some of them were going to resent deeply my way of doing things. But I was equally certain that no one was going to come out and say so. In some of the more fanciful personal memoirs of service with the SAS in the Gulf War, the authors describe how they would approach me for what seem to have been cosy little chats, often offering advice or telling me where I was going wrong. There are detailed accounts of the arguments they had with me and mention of almost coming to blows when I failed to act out their wonderful plans. I may as well state here that these accounts are as fictional as their authors’ pseudonyms.

  The truth was rather different. Almost invariably when I told them during the patrol what we were going to do, they would nod their heads and say, ‘OK, Billy.’ A few would go away and talk behind my back with others who shared their views, telling each other that a nutter had been put in charge of them. There is nothing either new or surprising in this – it is something that happens in every regiment of the British Army. The crucial point, however, is that I was the Regimental Sergeant-Major – a revered rank. No one in his right mind would dream of arguing with the RSM, far less even think of squaring up to him, either in peacetime or when at war.

  Undoubtedly, there was real resentment in some quarters. I was fully aware of this. To most of these men I was virtually a complete stranger. I had served with D Squadron for almost all of my service with the SAS. Of the thirty-three men in this unit I knew only three of them other, perhaps, than by sight. Nor, that first night – for me – in Iraq, could I help wondering how many would survive long enough for me to get to know them better.

  Half an hour after leaving the resupply area I sent a motorcycle rider forward to tell Pat to stop. One by one the vehicles halted. We all waited, swivelling round in our seats and gazing back the way we had come. Sure enough, right on time, below the horizon and in the far distance behind us a massive explosion erupted into the sky, full of red and yellow starbursts that momentarily turned the night into day. The sky had already returned to star-speckled blackness before the dull, rumbling blast had caught up and rolled over us. In the passing of a moment the three Iraqi corpses and their vehicle had become flames and smoke and dust and widely scattered scrap metal. My thoughts were immediately of their families, of their wives and children they’d left behind. I wondered, too, how many of my call sign would be in the same situation over the coming weeks.

  Mugger, the demolition man, sitting behind the Land Rover’s wheel on my right, wore a satisfied grin.

  ‘Nice one, Mugger,’ I told him.

  ‘I haven’t lost my touch, then,’ he replied and turned the key in the ignition. I had a feeling that we were going to need Mugger again, both for his calm approach and his expertise.

  Pat drove the lead vehicle because, despite my other reservations about him, I knew him to
be the top guy in Mobility Troop and a superb navigator. He was particularly expert with a piece of equipment called Trimpack, a satellite-navigation device. His performance while we were behind enemy lines was nothing less than excellent, but unfortunately his naturally cautious, by-the-book way of handling things didn’t suit my way of operating at all.

  Our order of march was Pat in the lead, then my vehicle, then the other six Land Rovers and the Unimog support vehicle strung out in a straight line behind at thirty-yard intervals. The three motorcycles kept station to one side or the other. The bikes were used partly to check out the ground ahead and partly to carry messages between vehicles. Because of their greater speed across country, and the fact that they throw up much less dust than the 110s, they could go out in advance of the patrol to take a close-up look at something we might have spotted through the night glasses. Since we were observing radio silence, however, they were used as a communication service most of the time, riding up and down to pass messages between the vehicles, rather like mounted cowboys escorting a wagon train in the Old West. I would just raise my hand and shout to one of the riders, who would come in closer and check with me, then zoom off and pass the message. Very simple, but it worked.

  The rocky terrain made the going extremely difficult, and that first night we covered a maximum of twenty kilometres in an hour, and sometimes less than half that. We didn’t talk much. All the equipment in the 110s and on the Unimog that wasn’t bolted on had to be secured or it would have been bounced out of the vehicle or damaged beyond repair in seconds. The noise was horrendous, with all our kit banging and rattling and vibrating like things possessed. After a few hours of being thrown around in this din, thinking became almost impossible.

  Even though the Land Rover Defender 110s we were using gave a much better ride than their predecessors, since they had the coil-spring suspension used in civilian Range Rovers, it was still one hell of a bumpy trip over that patch of desert. Moreover, having no windshield, which meant that we took the full brunt of an icy wind interspersed with long periods of sleet, did nothing to make it any more comfortable, let alone enjoyable.

  In my vehicle, even with all the gear we were carrying, we were not pushed for space with only three of us aboard. In a pinch this 3-ton baby can carry a driver and up to eight passengers. Apart from the name, however, our 110s had little in common with the commercial Land Rover. The spare wheel was carried flat on top of the bonnet, there were no windscreen, doors or roof, and the whole vehicle was painted a desert-camouflage shade, a sort of light sand. All the lights, including the brake lights, were painted out so that not even a flicker would show at night by accident.

  Lashed to the vehicles’ sides we carried sand channels, steel-mesh runners for crossing soft sand or ditches, and mounted at the front were powered winches to drag other vehicles, or even people, out of tight spots. Stowed inside and outside were jerry cans of petrol and water, rations, ammunition, spades and shovels, and a host of other pieces of essential equipment. Then came the weapons – enough weaponry, in fact, to start my own little war.

  Mounted on the bonnet directly in front of me was a 7.62mm GPMG, and on a mounting behind me, facing rearwards, was a Second World War-vintage 0.5-inch Browning M2 heavy machine-gun, an air-cooled, beltfed weapon with a high rate of fire and a tremendous punch. We were also carrying an 81mm mortar, a Mk19 grenade launcher, our personal weapons – M16s – and a Milan anti-tank-missile launcher. The Milan, a wire-guided Euromissile useful against prepared defences as well as armour, was mounted on the 110’s roll bar and had a range of 2 kilometres. On top of this we would place a thermal imager called a MIRA, a very useful piece of kit that could ‘see’ through clouds and mist, allowing you to spot people and vehicles in poor visibility several kilometres away. Besides all the different kinds of ammunition, we were carrying various types of explosive, detonators and anti-personnel mines.

  Not all the Land Rovers carried the same assortment of weapons – other than the GPMGs and personal weapons – equipment or explosives, but all were a variation on the theme of ‘mobile but heavily armed’. Multiply the contents of my 110 by eight, and it is immediately apparent that we were a force to be reckoned with. We could take on an enemy or a target face to face or at ranges of up to 4 kilometres. With the vehicles in line abreast on flattish terrain, the Brownings – each capable of firing some 500 rounds a minute – could decimate a vastly superior force up to 1.5 kilometres away, and became even more terrifyingly effective as the range shortened. Arguably the finest machine-gun ever made, these weapons were both reliable and accurate, and it was not for nothing that they had become the SAS soldier’s favourite support weapon.

  As we halted an hour before dawn to lie up for the day – having made our fifty kilometres – it was not our firepower which concerned me, however, but the readiness of the men who would man the weapons. It was up to me to do something about their morale and give Alpha One Zero the direction and aggression it seemed to have lost.

  The site chosen by Pat was ideal, with plenty of cover and a good escape route. I watched while he allocated areas to the 110s, which were separated into pairs, and selected four sentry positions. These were positioned for all-round defence, with each sentry a short distance away from one of the pairs of 110s. A sentry’s stag lasted two hours and the men in the two nearest vehicles would be responsible for manning one of the posts nearest them throughout the day. The sentry’s job was to stay hidden and report back any enemy movements or unusual activity. Since we were observing total radio silence, this meant that either one of his mates back with the vehicles had to stay on watch for any signals, or the sentry would have to crawl back to report in person. On flat ground when operating close in, the sentry could tug on a length of string or wire running back to ‘his’ two Land Rovers to attract attention. The unarmed Unimog was laid up in a central position, protected by the outer ring of Land Rovers.

  Having watched Pat make his dispositions I told him I was completely satisfied with the arrangements. The moment was spoiled, however, when I saw that the lads had cammed up – that is, camouflaged the vehicles with netting staked down to the ground. Turning to Pat, I told him, ‘There’s no need to hide the vehicles. We have total air superiority over Iraq. The Allied planes are all flying around at night with their lights on in case they bump into one another. We don’t need cam nets. There’s plenty of cover here to keep us hidden from ground forces, and if any do spot us then they’re close enough for us to have to fight or make a break for it anyway.

  ‘What we do is lay Union jacks on the ground, weighted down with stones, so that any aircraft flying over will see we’re British and not mistake us for a disguised mobile Scud-launching site. Let it go for today, but pass the word that tomorrow there will be no cam nets.’

  A look of dismay crossed his face. I could almost hear his thoughts out loud, ‘This idiot doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s going to get us all killed.’ But in the end his army training won out and he accepted my order, stomping off without another word.

  Later, when I popped my head under the cam net covering one of the pairs of 110s, I found a home from home. The crews had their Peak stoves going with pots simmering away and were sipping their brews, cuddled up out of the wind and cold and feeling nice and cosy. When they saw it was me they all stopped talking and looked rather guilty. I didn’t need to guess who they had been talking about. There’s a strong temptation to get all pally with the men in such circumstances, especially if you’re that rather isolated figure, the RSM. I resisted it. Alpha One Zero had to get back on course, and that meant its members needed gingering up.

  ‘Well, this is all nice and bloody cosy,’ I said. ‘Enjoy the moment, because there’s going to be a shake-up around here. This patrol is about to find out what it’s really like to be involved in a war.’ I walked off, getting ready for the moment when I would have to address the whole unit.

  I called the meeting for 1600 hours that afternoon, by which t
ime every member of the patrol had managed to get some food down him, as well as a few hours’ sleep. Everyone who was not on sentry duty was told to be there, and at the designated time the whole gang, less the four keeping watch, were gathered around my vehicle. I stood facing them with my back to the bonnet, and I gave them a long, hard stare. The afternoon sun did nothing to dispel the arctic cold, and in its harsh, probing glare the group of SAS soldiers gathered around were starkly lit against the desert landscape that surrounded us.

  They were a typical bunch – typical for the Regiment, that is: extremely varied in size, and probably the best-trained fighters and saboteurs in the world. A mean-looking, unwashed, unshaven crew, these were the men who would at times piss me off, but who would also fill me with pride, and never more so than when accomplishing the impossible against overwhelming odds.

  In short, from a chaotic, badly bungled and almost amateurish beginning, a fighting unit was to emerge that would flamboyantly carry out the most daring Special Forces action behind enemy lines of the entire Gulf War.

  These events, and the transformation of Alpha One Zero, still lay ahead when I got up to speak to them that afternoon. What I did know at the time is that a few of them, the most easily influenced, resented my takeover of command. They feared that their safe and comfortable routine was about to be disrupted and that danger – perhaps rather more than some of them were ready for – was to become part of our daily diet.

  I was not about to disappoint them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  DURING our stopover to resupply Alpha Three Zero on the flight in the previous night, I had told the OC that I would join him at his patrol’s LUP by the following night, 29/30 January. It meant a 160-kilometre drive over difficult terrain and in poor weather conditions, but I was determined to make it. By now Alpha One Zero had already been behind enemy lines for four days, yet had still to reach its area of operation on Main Supply Route 3, the road from Amman in Jordan to Baghdad, which lay to the north of where Alpha Three Zero was based. The ten days since they should have crossed had been wasted, and Scuds were still threatening Israel and the entire delicate balance of the Coalition. We urgently needed to crack on.