by H. C. Tayler
Shortly before midnight, for the second night in a row, I was shaken awake by one of the Marines. Not happy, I demanded to know what the devil he was doing. The answer could not have been better.
“We’re moving, Sir. Everyone has to make their way to the LS.”
“Moving?” I spluttered. “Moving where?” “We’re going back to Kuwait, Sir,” he told me, and was gone.
Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or perhaps just wild optimism, but I was unable to stop my imagination running wild with thoughts of hot showers, decent food, a good night’s sleep, and a rapid return to Blighty. Frankly, I should have known better.
NOTES
1. A handful of men within 42 Commando had also seen service in the Falklands War 21 years earlier. Uniquely, Colours Sergeant (later Warrant Officer) John “Ginge” Davidson served with the Reconnaissance Troop of 45 Commando in the South Atlantic and as a sniper with the Reconnaissance Troop of 42 Commando in the Gulf.
2. The sacking of the US Marine Corps helicopter squadrons was eventually reported in the British press and CO 42 Commando was quoted as saying the US aircrews had “bottled out”. The press coverage caused a political furore - but since the comments were factually accurate and had the support of many senior British officers, no action was taken.
3. “Jundi”: soldier (Arabic).
4. The Battle of the Marshes, fought largely on the Al Faw Peninsular, was one of the major actions of the Iran-Iraq war and is estimated to have cost the lives of 10,000 men.
5. Bodies collected by 3 Commando Brigade were indeed buried on the Al Faw peninsular to avoid a health hazard. The graves were marked and, under the auspices of the Red Crescent, they were exhumed a day or two later and given a formal Muslim burial.
6. Many of the Iraqi soldiers in the predominantly Shia south-east of the country had been drafted in from Sunni regions further north and were distrusted by the local populace, who quickly disassociated themselves from the fighters once the war began.
6
Back to Kuwait. This was amazing, unexpected, and excellent news. I had no idea what had precipitated it but if I had met the man responsible for the decision I would have kissed him. All around in the darkness was the quiet sound of rustling kit as the Marines stowed away their belongings in their bergens. I could even see the silhouettes of one of two keen souls standing on the track, rucksacks packed, waiting to go. I was up and out of my sleeping bag in seconds, delighted to be heading away from Iraq and back to somewhere I could get a hot shower and a cooked meal. My spirits sagged somewhat as I wrestled my bergen onto my back and realised the landing site was a good couple of miles away - no great distance, but a veritable marathon when carrying a small house on one’s back, and all the more so since my feet had still not fully recovered from the pounding they had taken on our arrival. Annoyingly, there was no sign of either the truck or the taxi that the Marines had so diligently liberated, so there was no alternative to walking. Still, a few blisters and an aching back seemed a relatively small price to pay for safe deliverance from a war zone, so I braced myself for the long walk to the helicopters. After a few minutes, the whole troop formed up on the road and the long trek began. Happily, fortune smiled down on me once again and transport then arrived, in the form of an ancient, dilapidated flatbed van, which had been commandeered by 2 Troop. It was already crammed with Marines, but they promised to return and pick us up, so I stopped walking at once, plonked myself on my bergen and wasted no time in demanding a cup of tea from the man nearest me.
True to their word, the van was indeed sent back for us and we piled into it with gusto. It was only just big enough to hold everybody so I shouldered my way past the Marines and climbed into the cab beside the driver. Let the enlisted men fight it out for a space in the back, I thought to myself, it’s only fitting that the officers ride in the front. In any case I wanted to have my seat secured lest anyone start any of that old-fashioned nonsense about allowing the more junior ranks onboard first. I wasn’t walking a step further than I had to, and that was all there was to it. Eventually, with some ingenious use of straps and karabiners, the bergens were fastened to the outside while the men squeezed together in the back. Before we set off the driver hopped out to give a brief on the finer mechanical details of his vehicle.
“There’s no brakes and the horn doesn’t work. So if anyone gets in the way, shout at the buggers to move, or I’ll run ‘em over,” he explained to the merriment of his passengers, before hopping back into the cab and starting the engine.
In the event, the van was only allowed to travel as far as the road junction at which we had been mortared on our arrival in Iraq, less than half the distance to the helicopter landing site. The rest of the journey was undertaken on foot, not my preferred method of travel but one I undertook willingly in the knowledge that a flight to safety awaited at the end of it. The landing site was back on the crater-pitted mud flats, about half a mile south west of where we had arrived just a few days earlier. Despite the bitter cold that night, the salt-crusted clay was not quite firm enough to support my weight and gave way with each step, allowing the cloying mud to gather around my boots as I walked. By the time I reached the designated rendezvous point my shoulder muscles were on fire and I was in a muck sweat. Unhappily there was a considerable wait for the helicopters to arrive, during which time the wind cut straight through my damp clothes, leaving me shivering like a schoolboy on a December rugby pitch. Fortunately my sniper colleagues were on hand, trading unlikely stories of shooting Iraqi soldiers at inconceivable distances and passing round steaming mugs of tea, which I unashamedly cadged from them whilst attempting to hide my hypothermic shivering. In the lee of an earth wall, a long line of stoves flickered, heating countless ration packs and mugs of tea and hot chocolate as J Company waited for its pick-up. As dawn broke, the Marines bantered among themselves, trading tales of firefights and narrow escapes, of wounded Iraqis and multiple surrenders, and of where we might be heading next. I had given no thought to this topic, happy enough in the knowledge that I was returning to the relative calm of Kuwait. Buoyed by their successes on the Al Faw peninsular, the boys were as eager as ever to take the fight to the Iraqis and were fervently hoping Kuwait was nothing more than a brief stopover prior to the next phase of the war. I kept my own aspirations firmly to myself.
Then, from the south, silhouetted against the early morning sky, several Chinook helicopters appeared, filling the air with the din of beating rotor blades. In seconds, stoves were extinguished, kit packed away, and the Marines trotted out onto the mudflats. The pilots brought their steeds in fast, banking hard to sit them down as close to us as possible. I felt the blast of downwash and looked up to see the visor-wearing spectre of a helicopter door gunner peering down at me over the top of a huge rotary cannon. The machine swung rapidly round and set itself down in the mud, tail-ramp already open. I wasted no time in scrambling to my feet and clambering aboard, savouring the warm blast of exhaust on my face and the smell of aviation fuel in my nostrils, which I always find unexpectedly reassuring. Within seconds everyone was onboard and the helicopter was airborne again. The flight was remarkably short and before I knew it, we were back on terra firma inside Kuwait.
Any hopes I had of a comfortable airbase with an officers’ mess and some decent tucker were swiftly dashed. I exited the Chinook, blinking in the bright morning sunlight, to be confronted by one of the bleakest patches of desert I have ever seen - it was even more featureless than Camp Gibraltar. Brilliant yellow sand stretched to the horizon in all directions, interrupted only by dozens of vehicles and tents, and countless men digging shell scrapes in the soft sand. This, it transpired, was TAA Viking, the place from which 40 Commando had launched their assault a few days earlier.(1) Now, however, it was home to 42 Commando in its entirety, since the trucks and other heavy equipment had been brought up by road from Camp Gib. Self-evidently, Viking was nothing more than a staging post before our next foray into Iraq. I scuffed my feet through
the sand, feeling a certain sense of inevitability about my plight. I had always known that thoughts of an early return home were absurdly optimistic (it’s a facet of my yellow-livered character always to hope for an easy route out of a tight spot) but nonetheless the reality of a prolonged stay in the Gulf weighed heavily on my mind. I focused instead on digging my shell-scrape as rapidly as possible, with the express intent of climbing into it and sleeping away the day under the warm desert sun. Within minutes I had a workable hole in the ground, so I patted down the sides, dragged my bergen and webbing inside, unrolled my sleeping mat, lay down and pulled my sunhat over my face. I remember indulging in a somewhat confused fantasy in which the lovely Charlotte performed a series of unspeakable sexual acts whilst simultaneously plying me with gin and tonic, before sleep overtook me and dropped into a blissful slumber.
A short time later I was awoken unceremoniously by a boot kicking me gently in the ribs. Peering out from under my sunhat, I was confronted by OC J Company.
“Time for us to say goodbye, Harry,” he intoned. “Your services are requested by M Company.”
“The miserable sods - I’ve only just got my head down,” I replied, somewhat testily. “Tell them to wait. I shall join them later.”
“No danger of that,” laughed my tormentor. “They’re saddling up for a move right now, and you need to be with them. I suggest you get a move on or you may have a long walk in front of you.”
“A move where?” I enquired, clinging vainly to the hope of a return to civilisation.
“Umm Qasr,” came the crushing reply.
The little port town of Umm Qasr had been targeted by coalition planners in the early phases of the deployment back in Kuwait. It was of strategic importance not just to the military but also to the allied PR campaign, since a deep-water harbour was necessary in order to bring in ships laden with humanitarian aid. Looking at the situation cynically (which I usually do), the invading Americans and Brits needed to be seen to be helping the local civilians as much as possible, if only to assuage the growing groundswell of anti-war public opinion back home. The required volumes of food, clean water and medical supplies were huge and getting shipping lanes open into Iraq was therefore a big priority. The mission to take the town had been assigned to a battalion of US Marines, but evidently something had gone awry, since they were about to be displaced by the Royal Marines. I had an immediate feeling of dread. (Months later I learned that the move into Umm Qasr was indeed politically driven: the failure of the U.S. Marines to take the town had caused considerable embarrassment at senior level, primarily because it meant the supply ship HMS Sir Galahad could not embark at the port and its cargo of humanitarian aid was therefore sitting uselessly at sea, rather than undergoing a stage-managed delivery in front of the world’s press. I am reliably informed that the decision to bin the U.S. 15 Marine Expeditionary Unit in favour of the Royal Marines was taken jointly by Blair and Bush, eager as always to achieve a positive sound bite irrespective of the consequences.)
Far from being concerned at the scale of the task in front of them, the men of M Company were grinning like Cheshire cats. They had watched in quiet frustration as J Company led the charge onto the Al Faw and now it was their turn to be in pole position.(2) Unhappily for me, the CO had switched most of the commando’s assets to the company group, including the snipers, UMST, and yours truly. God alone knows why he thought my knowledge of armoured manoeuvre might be useful in an urban assault, but there was no arguing with the decision, so I piled my kit onto the roof of a BV and climbed into the back.(3) The vehicle bounced its way across the desert sand and joined the back of a lengthy convoy making its way onto a road which led northwest into Iraq. The Marines onboard opened the side windows of the BV and I watched the world go by - miles and miles of empty desert, sand and rocks bleached yellow-white by the incessant glare of the sun, with just the occasional stunted thorn bush to break up the monotony of the landscape.
The first sign that we were nearing the Iraqi border came in the form of recently-dropped litter. Scattered across the desert were thousands of small leaflets exhorting Iraqis soldiers to surrender and promising them fair treatment at the hands of the coalition. They had been dropped in their millions from allied aircraft in the days before the war and many had evidently succumbed to the desert winds and found their way back into Kuwait. Moments later the convoy ground to a halt as the lead vehicles encountered the border post, which was manned by US troops. There followed a brief exchange before we were ushered over the border and, less than eight hours after leaving the place, I found myself back in Iraq.
Immediately beyond the border lay the old United Nations peacekeepers’ camp, built after the first Gulf War to facilitate patrolling of the demilitarised zone between Iraq and Kuwait. The convoy swung in through the gates of the camp to be greeted by a handful of redneck halfwits from the US Marines, sporting bandannas and ragged green T-shirts with the sleeves torn off. They looked for all the world like badly dressed extras from a cheap Hollywood Vietnam movie.
“Hey man, welcome to i-raq!” hollered a nearby imbecile, brandishing a machine-gun and a belt of ammunition.
“Go and fuck yourself,” replied the Marine sitting next to me, with venom. I couldn’t have put it better myself. The Americans, looking visibly crestfallen, sloped off into some nearby buildings as their British counterparts de-bussed.
The UN camp, formerly a relatively pleasant spot in an unpleasant part of the world, had suffered at the hands of the Americans. Many of the buildings had been wholly or partly destroyed by shelling, their roofs and walls reduced to a tangle of bent girders and torn sheets of corrugated steel. The water and power supplies were destroyed, shell craters pitted the open areas, and much of the camp was covered in debris and broken glass. Worse, in the three days of their occupation, the US Marines had failed to dig any latrines and almost every building had been used as toilet. Flies buzzed constantly and the stench of faeces was everywhere. But there was no time for me to work out how best to avoid taking part in the inevitable cleanup, since I was faced by a much more pressing problem. With no ceremony, no recce, and no time for any sort of meaningful briefing from the yanks (not that they would have been capable of providing one - I gathered afterwards that three days in Umm Qasr had turned the battalion commander into a gibbering buffoon; the hapless creature was on the verge of a nervous breakdown), the company commander set about giving his orders for an advance on the town.
As a gaggle of officers and NCOs formed around the rear of his vehicle, OC M Company waved them into silence and held out his map in front of him.
“Right fellas, time is pressing on, the CO wants this town taken by nightfall, so let’s not have any mincing around,” was his opening gambit. I felt my bowels loosen as he continued. “We’re going in on foot, supported by our BV-mounted HMGs and Milans.” Using a biro, he outlined the proposed route on his map. “We’ll move north from here, then west through the town via this main street. The boys will need to fan out into the side streets, and the snipers will be mobile on quad bikes, moving to our flanks to provide additional cover wherever they can.” At this point I found myself hyperventilating with anxiety. I had been mixed up in some pretty poorly planned ventures in my time, including some fearfully ill thought-out jobs in Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, but nothing on this scale. Without the benefit of even a helicopter recce, M Company was about to conduct an assault on an enemy-held town which had bogged down an entire battalion of United States Marines for three days. It didn’t seem to faze the company commander one bit though.
“The US Marines have been hit by sniper fire from numerous buildings,” he continued, worsening my panic attack with every word. “This is Northern Ireland routine, plain and simple. Hard-targeting through the streets, fire positions on every corner, mutual support.” My vision began to blur as the fog of panic closed around me. Then he softened up somewhat, adding, “Don’t forget the locals though. They’ve probably had a shocking time
with the yanks. Make sure the lads take stacks of biscuits and nutty with them and dole it out to the kids. Right, any questions?”(4)
There was a brief pause before someone asked, “What happens if they open up on us?”
OC M Company looked at him disdainfully as if he’d been personally affronted. “Then we sort it out the old fashioned way,” was his curt reply. “Kick the door down, get stuck in, slot anyone with a weapon, and move on. They’ll soon get the message. We move out in fifteen minutes.”
