Eye of the Storm

by Peter Ratcliffe

  Apart from geeing up the boys and communicating with RHQ at Al Jouf, I had spent most of the 29th trying to get a feel for the ground. There’s nothing mystical about this process. It’s an instinct you have to acquire in order to be fully in command, and comes from experience, a good assessment of your area of operations, and your own and others’ judgement of the enemy’s movements and capabilities. In fact, I found it took only a short while to get a good feeling about being in Iraq. That might sound ridiculous – being seventy clicks inside enemy territory and about to move much deeper into it – but I felt there was nothing immediately life-threatening about our position. It was a rather Boys’ Own notion, I suppose, but I knew I had the men, the weapons and, collectively, the ability to cause Saddam’s forces a lot of grief.

  With the meeting over, I decided then and there that we would not wait until after dark to move out. By grabbing the last couple of hours of daylight we could make much faster progress. The chances of one of the very rare sorties by Iraqi aircraft coming this way and actually identifying us on the move as an enemy patrol were virtually non-existent.

  The men were already drifting away after my little pep talk. I called after the troop sergeants to come back.

  ‘It’s now fifteen hundred hours,’ I told them. ‘I want you to get everyone packed up and be ready to leave at seventeen hundred. We’ll be pulling out then, and we won’t be stopping until we team up with Alpha Three Zero. It’s a hard push but we can do it.

  ‘So let’s get cracking.’ Pat hung back as the others went off to join their vehicles, and I turned to address him.

  ‘Pat, you’ll be in the lead Land Rover again tonight,’ I told him. ‘You did a good job last night. We must get to that rendezvous with Alpha Three Zero by the early hours of the 30th. Then we’ll be in position tomorrow night, finally, to get where we’re supposed to be.’

  If you hold a position of some authority, to be talked about behind your back and generally slagged off is a fact of life in most outfits – and especially in the British Army. A part of this is the common human reaction to people in authority; another part is the fact that everyone wants to be promoted, and wants to be in charge. Where the SAS is concerned, with everyone in the Regiment vying for the top job, the more of those ahead of them who drop off the ladder the better they like it, since it means that they have moved one place closer to the top. As a result, there are far more schemers in the SAS than an outsider might think. Guys just hoping you’ll fall, and not at all unwilling to give you that little shove if they can get away with it. They all want to get there – to the top – which is only understandable. It can be quite comical sometimes, though, having seen these characters all slating the guy in charge, because the moment they are put in charge themselves they have to go on the defensive in order to guard their own backs against the pack they have just emerged from. Knowing all this, I expected to take plenty of stick before this war was ended.

  I spent the rest of the time before we pulled out on the radio to HQ at Al Jouf. That was the worst thing about being in command – the length of time that had to be spent on communications, encoding and sending signals or receiving and decoding them. The radio systems we were using were supposed to be state-of-the-art, but in fact they were nothing like it. We operated on a ‘burst-transmission’ system, which was at best inefficient. Under this method we sent our encrypted messages by ‘bursting’ them into the ether, which allowed the receiver at the other end to pick them up at any time; in effect, either to pluck them in straight away, or leave them floating about in limbo for up to several days.

  The same system was used for HQ’s messages to us. Sometimes at the end of a night drive the counter on the radio set in my vehicle would advise that I had four or five messages waiting to be ‘sucked in’, as it were. These had to be taken in order, first one first, second one second, and so on. Since some of the codes were very complex it could take four or five hours to decode all our waiting messages, of which the last one, almost inevitably, would prove to be the most relevant.

  What we really needed was a mobile phone, but the Royal Corps of Signals, which has a unit at Hereford attached to the Regiment, is obsessed with, even paranoid about, electronic warfare (EW), whereby an enemy using direction-finding techniques and equipment can locate your position by getting a fix on your transmission. This is understandable where a large formation like a battalion or armoured unit is concerned, but we were small, fast-moving patrols operating behind enemy lines. What should also have been taken into account was the fact that Iraqi radio-defence systems were made inoperable within a few days by American jamming operations.

  We had satcoms, which gave us direct voice-to-voice access to Al Jouf, but initially we had been ordered not to use them except in dire emergency. After a short while, however, we knew that we had the upper hand over the Iraqis, and could safely use our more efficient, and far easier to operate, satellite equipment, which saved us from spending many tedious and unnecessary hours on exchanging and decoding a few simple messages.

  Eventually the time came for our departure, and in the weak, late-afternoon sunlight we set off. We made slow but steady progress over the rocky desert during the night. It was still bitterly cold, but we were spared further rain and snow.

  Once again there was little conversation in my Land Rover. Because of the constant noise it was next to impossible to exchange any but the briefest shouted comments with Harry, the rear gunner, while my driver, Mugger, wasn’t strong on chat himself. If he and I talked at all it was usually about the extension he planned to build on to his house, or what he intended doing after he left the army. Mugger had a marvellous temperament and manner for an SAS sergeant – calm, easy-going and humorous, he was a good counterweight to more volatile and temperamental members. A big, fair-haired man, over six feet tall and well-built with it, his nickname came from his days as a boxer, and although he had given up fighting he had kept in great shape.

  Besides Mugger’s natural quietness, though, there were other barriers to our nattering away like some of the other lads. One was that I was of a different generation, having joined the SAS ten years before he went through Selection. The second, and probably more telling, hurdle was that I was the RSM. Chit-chatting with the boss can be hard going in any job, and soldiering is no exception. Mugger probably felt that he had drawn the short straw in having to sit next to me night after night, although he never let it show in his manner. He was an out-and-out professional, and I came to rely on him completely as the mission unfolded.

  Personally, I was equally happy not having to make small talk. I had a lot on my mind, and was to spend most of our long night rides making plans for the following day. During the whole of our four weeks together I rarely exchanged small talk with the men, and they, wary of my rank, equally rarely tried to initiate a conversation. Since I preferred it that way, I was glad of their reticence.

  Eventually, after eleven solid hours of driving, we arrived in the vicinity of Alpha Three Zero’s temporary base. It was 0400 hours on 30 January, and we had been on the go since 1700 the previous afternoon. We had averaged just 15 kilometres an hour, which is as good an indicator as any of what night driving over that sort of terrain was like.

  As we had agreed earlier over the radio, the 2IC of Alpha Three Zero, Captain Guy, had walked south about a kilometre from their base to rendezvous with us. When he made his first sighting of Guy and two of his men, Pat had stopped our convoy and sent a message back to me with one of the motorcyclists that we had a possible enemy contact. Even though we had an arranged rendezvous and were in the designated area, he was right to be cautious. I told Mugger to close up on Pat’s Land Rover ahead and kill the engine. Looking through the MIRA, the thermal-imaging device mounted on top of the Milan on the roll bar, we could clearly make out three people on the brow of a small mound about two kilometres ahead of us. They were in the right place and at the right time to be ours, but just the chance that they could be the enemy sent t
he adrenalin racing through our veins and sharpened our senses.

  Now halted alongside Pat’s 110, I told him, ‘I’m going to take us in about another click, then I want you to lie up with all the vehicles while I go ahead on foot and check them out.’

  We took the convoy to a point about halfway from where we had spotted the figures, and stopped again. I got out, selected three men from another crew, and went forward with them on foot. The party ahead must have been watching us as we had been watching them, for when we were about three hundred metres away I spotted the prearranged signal we had agreed over the radio. I immediately sent our reply. Minutes later I was standing face to face with Captain Guy. He grinned a greeting and said, ‘Nice to see you again so soon, Billy.’

  We had last met at Victor, when I had waved him off on one of the C-130s that took the squadrons to Al Jouf. But I had spoken with his OC less than thirty hours earlier when I had landed at their position in the resupply Chinook. Everything we had needed to discuss had been said then, and there was no reason to hang about now.

  ‘Do you have an LUP picked out for us?’ I asked.

  Guy nodded. ‘About two kilometres north of here. I scouted the area myself yesterday and this will do you fine,’ he said.

  After that exchange there was nothing more to say. Unless there was some major rethink at HQ, we would not be linked with Alpha Three Zero again on this mission.

  Captain Guy gave us directions to the LUP he had pre-selected for us, after which I thanked him and ordered my column to move out, while the three members of the other patrol vanished back into the night. We reached our LUP co-ordinates within fifteen minutes, and I silently congratulated Alpha Three Zero’s 2IC on his choice. The tallest hills in that area of Iraq are no more than a hundred feet high, but in our immediate vicinity there were lots of small hillocks all around us. Their presence allowed us to conceal the vehicles easily, and meant that we could walk about and stretch our legs without risk of being overlooked by shepherds or bedouin.

  Pat and I picked out the best defensive positions and the men began settling in for the day. When I reminded them that we would not be using cam nets, however, their faces momentarily dropped. But apart from a little unintelligible grumbling they got on with it, placing a large Union jack, pinned down with stones, between each pair of Land Rovers. Only Pat tried to change my mind. He had obviously given the matter a lot of thought since I had announced my decision the morning before, and had decided to approach it from another angle.

  ‘Can I have a word with you?’ he asked.

  ‘What’s wrong, Pat?’ I said.

  ‘I’d like to remind you about SOPs.’ SOPs are standing operational procedures. Every regiment in the British Army has SOPs. They are guidelines, but that is all they are. They are not carved in stone.

  ‘Yes?’ I replied, unhelpfully.

  ‘Well, we’re not using cam nets, and SOPs say we should be.’

  ‘Well, Pat,’ I said, ‘I’m not interested in cam nets and I’m not interested in SOPs. They are simply guidelines.’ He thought about that for a moment, but obviously believed that he could take it just one step further. There was nothing wrong with his determination, but he picked the wrong argument this time.

  ‘The Deputy Director won’t like it if we ignore SOPs,’ he ventured.

  ‘I don’t give a toss what the Deputy Director thinks,’ I told him. ‘He’s tucked up in bed in Riyadh and not here. I also don’t give a damn about SOPs. I am the SOP as far as you’re concerned. Now drop it, and let’s get on with the job.’

  A few days later we were to hear by radio that a unit of D Squadron elsewhere in western Iraq, hidden under cam nets while lying up, had been attacked by one of our own aircraft. The pilot had spotted two Land Rovers under their camouflage nets and mistaken them for a Scud missile. He had launched a Maverick air-to-ground missile which had exploded beneath the front wheels of one of the vehicles, causing major mechanical damage but, fortunately, no casualties. After hearing that titbit of news my own unit brightened up considerably, and there were no more protests about my decision not to use cam nets.

  I tried on other occasions to explain to Pat how necessary it was to ignore an SOP in specific circumstances. For example, it states in Regimental SOPs that a soldier operating as a signaller must carry his codes in the map pocket of his trousers. Clearly, however, if you were wading across a river and the codes were inevitably going to get wet, you would transfer them to your shirt pocket. What was more, as I had learned after an experience during my jungle training that might have got me RTU-ed, I had good reason to know that map pockets were not necessarily secure. But Pat would never agree. To him SOPs were the Bible. You just had to comply with them. Our arguments – differences, really, to be fair – would always end the same way, with me telling him, ‘Pat, we’re at war. We can do what we like. I can do what I like.’

  Nevertheless, Pat preferred to work within the rules, and was often egged on to approach me by others in the patrol. It was extremely frustrating, but I couldn’t make him understand. In the end, whenever he came to me moaning about some SOP or other that I had contravened, I had to tell him to leave it alone – hardly a very constructive argument.

  Most of the other members of the patrol were more flexible, especially after the Allied pilot’s attack on the D Squadron Land Rovers. When I first banned the use of cam nets, however, they didn’t like it one little bit, and I found the usual banter noticeably absent as I made my rounds of our new LUP.

  By then everything was in place and the men had lit their stoves and were heating food and water for a brew. I would normally have expected one or two of them to have invited me to share a mug of hot, sweet army tea at their vehicle, but all I received were sheepish looks and averted eyes. Just like children, I told myself, and hurried back to my own stove and mug, on which I was soon warming the feeling back into my fingers as I sipped the tea I’d made.

  We were camped that day in a place just to the south of the small Iraqi town of Nukhayb, and from the following night would be operating in an area north of an east-west line drawn through that town. Alpha Three Zero’s operational area was to the south of the same line. The reason for allotting patrols completely separate areas of operations is not just perfectly logical, but essential. It is to avoid any form of contact between units that could lead to a ‘blue-on-blue’ situation, a euphemism for occasions when friendly forces end up firing on one another. No SAS patrol will ever stray over the borders of its area of operations without first notifying the unit into whose area it will move.

  The Regiment had been involved in a blue-on-blue in the Falklands, when a member of the Special Boat Squadron had been killed by a patrol from the SAS. It was a tragic accident, but the SBS had been operating outside their designated area of operations. A firefight had started, and it was only when someone shouted and the other side heard English being spoken that the mistake was realized. By then, however, one SBS trooper had been killed.

  At our new LUP that morning I spent the whole of my free time on the radio while the off-duty men settled down to sleep. The news was not good. Bravo Two Zero had still not made contact, and a unit of D Squadron operating some fifty kilometres south-west of us had been compromised and involved in a heavy exchange of fire with the enemy. Seven men had become separated from the main unit and were missing, with one of them known to be injured. On top of this, an eight-man patrol, Bravo One Nine, who deployed on the same night as Bravo Two Zero but had sensibly taken a vehicle, had also been compromised and was now out of touch, heading, it was hoped, for the Saudi Arabian border.

  On a lighter note, RHQ also passed on to me the response in London to my having been sent into action. The Director of Special Forces, a very jovial brigadier, had refused to believe the report given to him by the duty officer in the ops room in London. The Director was a real character, a genuinely funny man who was both very gregarious and extremely good company.

  ‘You must be fucking jokin
g,’ was his first comment to the ops officer. ‘The RSM’s role in war is ammo and POWs. What the hell are you talking about?’ So far as I could gather, when his ops officer insisted that I had indeed been sent into Iraq to take over a patrol, the Director told him, ‘Don’t be so damned stupid. RSMs don’t fight in wartime. It’s an outrageous suggestion. Either that, or they’ve all gone stark raving mad out there.’ In the end, it took a special signal from Al Jouf to convince him that I was not nursing the ammo in Saudi Arabia, but leading Alpha One Zero behind enemy lines.

  From the radio I also learned that our massive 160-kilometre push during the night had reduced some of the pressure on the CO, since it had already begun to justify his decision to replace the patrol’s original OC with me. Most of that pressure was coming from the Deputy Director in Riyadh, who could behave at times like a frustrated commanding officer, and who would occasionally meddle and criticize, without necessarily offering constructive alternatives.

  So far as I – and a great many others – was concerned, however, and whatever the pressure the Deputy Director was trying to exert we had a CO who was performing absolutely brilliantly in very difficult circumstances. He never became rattled even when under extreme pressure; that night alone he had twenty-three men missing in action, but simply carried on performing as a commanding officer should. Well liked throughout the Regiment, he was also well respected – which is not always the same thing. Our CO bothered to communicate with his men, and took pains to learn their names and their worth. By trusting me he had stuck his neck out, and I was determined not to let him down. I didn’t give a damn how difficult it might be, I was going to do my utmost to pull off any mission thrown at me.