Harry Flashman and the Invasion of Iraq

by H. C. Tayler

With that, the NCOs and officers scuttled back to their waiting charges, eager to pass on the brief that would see us trekking into Umm Qasr unprotected and on foot. I said a quiet prayer and devoted the time to dousing my rifle liberally with oil, on the premise that I might soon need it to work.

  By mid-afternoon, the whole of M Company and attached ranks, including one Capt. H Flashman of the Queen’s Royal Hussars, was patrolling warily north from the UN camp. A mile or so away to the east lay the docks, out of sight from our low-lying position. Securing them was the underlying priority, but there was little point even approaching the port while a town of several thousand inhabitants lay hostile on the doorstep. Wasteland stretched either side of the road for a short distance, until we came to the first shanty-style houses to our west, squalid little mud-brick residences with tin roofs and broken windows and doors. At first glance the place looked unoccupied but on closer inspection I could make out the occasional face peering anxiously at us from behind steel doors or through filth-encrusted windows. No-one ventured out to greet us and even the dogs were silent, so the company passed on without stopping.

  At the top of the road, some half a mile from the camp, was a relatively smart-looking hotel, standing proud in walled grounds adorned with little marble statues and well-tended palm trees. The lawns looked a little shabby and the facade could have used a coat of paint, but the overall impression was that, in its heyday, it must have been the destination of choice for visiting ships’ captains and the like. It would soon become home to elements of 3 Commando Brigade Headquarters, but for now the place was abandoned to the elements so we passed without stopping. The road into Umm Qasr turned west and a smattering of houses began to appear on either side, generally single-story dwellings half-hidden behind robust-looking walls and wrought-iron gates. A mile or two later the buildings became smaller and more condensed as we entered Umm Qasr proper. The road surface became pitted and potholed, while most of the side roads were barely metalled at all. Rubbish was everywhere, discarded plastic bags clinging to every bit of foliage and broken glass crunching underfoot. Fetid puddles of oily water lay by the roadside and my nostrils were assaulted by the occasional stench of raw sewage. (I’m sure the tree-huggers will say the state of town was caused by the biting economic sanctions, but personally I point the finger of blame squarely at the locals - the idle buggers don’t even bother burning their rubbish, they just chuck it out of the front door.) The local populace was more in evidence here, perhaps emboldened by their increased numbers. Women and children peered through gaps in wooden fences and round the side of steel gates and doors, while some of the local men were confident enough simply to stand in groups at the side of the road and watch as we passed. A sort of Mexican stand-off ensued, with neither side seemingly willing to break the silence. Then a couple of the Marines peeled off to a flank, offering boiled sweets to a handful of children hiding in a school-yard behind a low brick wall. Bewildered and not a little frightened, they hesitated before taking up the offering, then shot grateful smiles in our direction before running off, shouting to their friends. Within minutes, children were appearing in the street in their dozens, in some cases forcibly shoved towards us by their parents. Soldiers dug in their pockets and pouches, and Umm Qasr was awash with sweets and biscuits in minutes.

  I began to relax, which is never a clever thing to do in hostile territory, and I paid the price almost immediately. A short, burly man came barging out of his house, kicking aside the kid’s who were clustered around me begging for sweets, and began haranguing me at the top of his voice. Bald as a coot, sporting a huge moustache and wearing the traditional Arab garb in a garish lilac colour, he was livid in the extreme. Fortunately my Arabic was up to the job, for I found it pretty straightforward to understand what he was saying.

  “You, you are an officer, yes?” he demanded of me, pointing at my rank slides. “Why you bomb this town?! Why?! Many people now dead! My cousin, my uncle, their family, all dead! You Americans, why you keep bombing my town? Eh!?”

  I drew myself up to my full height, looked down my nose at him, and replied with utmost sincerity, “My friend, I am not an American.” He looked quizzical at this and was about to say something, but I waved him silent. “I am British. We are all British. The Americans have gone.” This was not strictly true, since they were still loading up their vehicles back at the UN camp, but it made little difference since they would certainly not be re-visiting Umm Qasr.

  “But why you bomb this town?” repeated my assailant at the top of his voice.

  “Neh!” I replied. “We have not bombed anywhere sadiq,(5)we have only just arrived.”

  He looked at me unbelievingly and said slowly, “You, your friends, these soldiers, they are not Americans?”

  I expectorated loudly and spat angrily on the ground - Arabs love a bit of theatre. “We are not American!” I stated with passion. “We are British. We are happy to be here. And if you behave well towards us, there will be no trouble.”

  “Where are the Americans?” he asked, still not quite believing me.

  “Gone,” was my monosyllabic reply. “And they will not be back.”

  This was evidently too much for him, for he reverted to type and began to assail me once again about his lost cousin and uncle. I clapped my hand on his shoulder to shut him up.

  “Sadiq, I am truly sorry for your uncle and your cousin. But that is over now. No more bombing - as long as there is no trouble in the town.”

  At this he even smiled for a second, paused, then suddenly thrust out his hand in friendship, which I shook despite myself. He introduced himself as Sameer, then turned towards a group of local men that had formed a little distance behind him. “Then you are welcome,” he announced at the top of his voice, grinning. “Very welcome. But no more bombing, eh?” He winked and gestured to his colleagues to come and meet me, which they did, albeit cautiously. A remarkably orderly queue formed, each one of them waiting in turn to shake me by the hand and mutter words of welcome in Arabic. Despite the exponential increase in the chance of contracting mange, I did my duty and thanked each one of them for the friendly welcome. In my experience, it often pays to keep the locals onside and I was taking no chances.

  In the course of conversation, my burly accuser described himself as a businessman, though he declined to say what line of business he was in. Judging by the reaction of his colleagues to his presence, he was held in high regard locally and could therefore be a useful ally should things turn ugly. He invited me into his house for a cup of tea, which, not wanting to be separated from the Marines, I declined, whereupon he handed me a cigarette. I’m more of a cigar man as a rule, but in the circumstances I thought it might be inappropriate to ask for a Monte Cristo, so I accepted. As expected, the tobacco was utterly rancid - it was all I could do to stop myself coughing like a first-time schoolboy smoker. Hiding my discomfort I puffed away like a trooper, happy to be exchanging pleasantries rather than high-velocity rounds, which had seemed a distinct possibility when we exited the camp.

  Time marched on. Unhappily for me, so did M Company. Before I knew it I was entirely alone, oblivious to the fact that the Marines had disappeared into the town centre without me. In fact it was one of the local men who pointed this out to me, with a wry grin on his face. I forced a grin back at him, shrugged my shoulders as nonchalantly as was possible in the circumstances and quietly finished smoking my cigarette. Eventually, with a growing sense of unease, I said my goodbyes and extracted myself from the group, then hurried down the main street hoping that nothing sinister occurred before I caught up with the Marines. Happily it didn’t - unless you count being mobbed by dozens of children demanding sweets.

  By the time I re-joined M Company they were about halfway down Umm Qasr’s main street. There were less civilians here, since most of the housing was set back from the main road, but plenty of people still came out to observe our arrival in the town. The road opened out into a broad boulevard, bounded on either side by wide
stretches of unkempt scrub, dotted with birch trees. The Marines weaved between the trees, emerging frequently to dart onto the road and hand over yet more sweets to any awaiting children.

  Just to the south of the main street lay the local Ba’ath Party headquarters building, which it was felt was as likely as anywhere to house jundies. A large, imposing place, its grim facade was set back among the trees, ringed by a wire-topped brick wall. I kept my distance from the place and hid in a small culvert behind some birch trees as a section of men was sent forward to search it. There followed a brief interlude as they broke into the building - which wasn’t easy, since the windows were barred and the steel doors had been bolted and padlocked. Unhappily for the Ba’athists, Royal Marines seem to have a penchant for breaking and entering, and the padlocks were smashed off in seconds. A few shots rang out as the interior of the offices were systematically cleared, but no Iraqis were found within and the boys returned from the depths of the building, squinting their eyes against the afternoon sunshine, empty handed.

  We reached the end of the main street shortly before the sun hit the horizon, whereupon the company turned about and began heading for home. I was as amazed as anyone by this unlikely turn of events - we had marched into the heart of the town to a friendly greeting by the locals, without a single shot being fired in anger. I discovered later that our US colleagues had never ventured out of their armoured vehicles, hence the bewilderment of the Iraqis to see us patrolling on foot. The bombing which they were so upset about had been a disproportionate response by the Americans to small-arms fire and, with no-one on the ground to direct the incoming air-strikes, it had inevitably been horribly inaccurate. Those same Iraqis who engaged the Americans with their AK47s had taken a long, hard look at the newly-arrived Brits and sensibly decided that caution was the better part of valour. Silent or not, the fact remained that the town was still crawling with jundies, so I kept my wits about me on the return journey to the UN camp. Like the outbound journey it passed off peacefully and we were back inside the wire shortly after dusk. Umm Qasr had fallen to M Company with barely a murmur, and no-one was more relieved than me. To the great amusement of everyone present, the company commander memorably remarked during the ensuing evening brief that he had suffered harder nights out in Plymouth.

  By the time we returned to the camp, the rest of 42 Commando had taken up residence and the place was a hive of activity. The last of the yanks had disappeared, tails between their legs, in the direction of Kuwait, leaving acres of derelict, unhygienic accommodation for us to choose from. Commando Headquarters was housed in one of the camp’s larger buildings which had suffered only minor damage during the bombardment. J Company and L Company had found accommodation blocks near the centre of the camp, while M Company and J Company squeezed into a series of portakabin-style buildings alongside.

  No accommodation had been set aside for the attached ranks and it was a case of every man for himself to secure the best of the remaining facilities. As you have probably gathered, every man for himself is a game I excel at, and it was only a short time before I discovered a plum accommodation block, largely unscathed by shelling, featuring not just a bed but a large, American-style refrigerator. The place was occupied by some enlisted ranks from the motor transport section, who I took great pleasure in evicting before going in search of some clement company, in the form of the combat camera team, with whom to share my new-found luxury abode. I eventually found them having a row with various members of Recce Troop over a dust-filled hovel with no windows, so it gave me great pleasure to invite them into my new home and thereby ensure I had the benefit of their company - not to mention the inside line on a lot of good gossip from Brigade Headquarters - for the foreseeable. Would you credit it, by the time we got back to my new home, several more Marines were in the process of moving in. The impertinent devils had even pushed my bergen to one side in their rush to ensconce themselves in the bedroom. I spent a gratifying thirty seconds venting my spleen and threatening to charge every man among them, before they dragged their belongings back through the door and scuttled off from whence they came. It was that kind of night - little more than anarchy, where the victor took the spoils and the devil took the hindmost. And if you did discover something of value, it paid to keep a tight grip on it, lest another roving party attempted to liberate it for themselves.

  Their old home may have been a dust-filled dump, but in it the combat camera boys had discovered a stash of food - proper tucker from a grocery, mark you, infinitely better stuff than tinned rations - which they had diligently taken with them as they exited the building. As a result we treated ourselves to a slap-up dinner of spaghetti bolognaise (although the sauce had a slightly odd taste, being made from a couple of tins of ham, since there wasn’t any beef). Under any other circumstances I would have thought it relatively meagre fare, but compared with boil-in-the-bag rations it felt like an evening at Simpsons in the Strand.

  As we finished eating, the door crashed open and in strode the Battle Group Engineering Officer, whom I had first bumped into at Junior Staff College a couple of years earlier. He was a larger than life figure who, coming from good stock and being fairly able to handle a horse, was utterly wasted on the Royal Engineers; he self-evidently should have been a cavalry officer. Barrel-chested and with an ebullient personality to match, he was seldom without an idea for starting mischief, or at least an anecdote of previous illicit derring-do. On this occasion he was sporting an ear-to-ear grin and clutching an armful of parcels and letters from the UK.

  “Evening chaps,” boomed the BGE. “Didn’t know where to find you, so I headed straight for the smartest looking building.” He cast his eyes around the room, which was dimly lit by a couple of candles and a collection of head-torches. “I wasn’t far wrong either, from the looks of it. This is a bloody palace compared with our grot.”

  “It’s performance-related,” I told him, with a straight face. “I’d offer you a seat but we don’t have any. You can sit on a bergen if you wish.”

  He drew up a rucksack, dished out several letters, and then produced a half-pint bottle of whisky from his coat pocket. He was pretty liberal with the stuff, but then he could afford to be, since his father was sending him a parcel on a twice-weekly basis (the whisky being decanted into plastic ginger beer bottles in order to get past the screening processes of the British Forces Postal Service). It was just as well, since between us we disposed of the entire contents in a matter of minutes.

  The conversation flowed as merrily as the whisky, with my Engineer chum and me exchanging anecdotes from Staff College (which under any other circumstances would have been crushingly dull; I can only think that the anarchy of war had made us nostalgic for the predictable tedium of Shrivenham) and the combat camera crew bemoaning the fact that our easy entry into Umm Qasr meant there hadn’t been any firefights for them to film. Still without the benefit of a decent night’s sleep since the invasion began, I quickly felt the pangs of fatigue creeping up behind my eyes and began contemplating a retreat to my newly-acquired bed, when suddenly we heard the crash of a huge explosion, the building shook, windows rattled, and the roof tiles lifted momentarily and dropped back into place with a bang.

  “Shave a dog’s head!” exclaimed the BGE, plagiarising a expression recently coined by the ever-inventive Ops Officer. “What in the blue blazes was that?”

  “Buggered if I know Sir,” answered the matelot cameraman, “But I’d suggest that, as Engineering Officer, you might want to report to the Ops Room and find out.”

  “Point taken,” came the answer, and he exited the room at speed.

  I prayed to the gods of cowardice and longevity that it wasn’t the start of a bombardment. My prayers were evidently answered; in the minutes that followed the silence of the night was broken only by dogs barking in the distance and the sounds of the occasional vehicle entering or exiting the camp. Working on the assumption that being fast asleep and (apparently) ignorant of any threat to the camp
might reduce my chances of getting dragged into any shenanigans, I wasted no time in sliding into my sleeping bag and stretching out on the mattress. I was asleep in seconds.

  I was awakened the next morning by the BGE, still as exuberant about life as he had been the night before. The explosion, he informed me, was a Silkworm missile landing a short distance from the camp.(6) It had exploded harmlessly in the desert, which was bloody lucky considering there was a large military establishment, not to mention a decent-sized town, within a few hundred metres. News imparted, he shot off in search of his engineering brethren to brief them on the day’s work.

  I mooched over to the Ops Room for the morning brief, hoping to avoid any form of duties. The camp, even in its bombed-out state, was a far more pleasant environment than the town, and the thought of a quiet day soaking up the sun and devouring some more half-decent food, was a compelling one. Inevitably, such plans were scotched the moment the Commanding Officer opened his mouth.

  “Congrats to OC M Company on yesterday’s efforts,” he began. “We’ve got this place in our grasp now, we need to make sure we keep it so. Our main efforts are therefore humanitarian aid, coupled with ensuring the security of the town. The place is presumably still crawling with Iraqi troops and Ba’ath party members, so let’s set about rounding them up.”

  The remainder of his orders were taken up with the specifics of how these tasks were to be achieved. Now that the town was deemed safe, the ITN camera crew had been brought up from Kuwait and were eager to get some shots of Marines patrolling the streets. Food and water would be distributed to the populace by Marines operating from trucks driven up from Kuwait. Meanwhile, J Company was tasked with mounting lengthy patrols through the town and searching any unoccupied buildings that might be housing recalcitrant jundies. I slouched discreetly at the back of the orders group hoping, as usual, to avoid work and, as was fast becoming the norm on this deployment, failed.