“Shut it, Fuck Nuts.”
“I love you, Michael! Let’s have a baby.” Nig started now.
“Shut it! Right! Today, men, is range day. We’re going to put a huge amount of ammo into a fist full of paper targets and pretend they are Iraqi soldiers: do you understand me? I do not want any buggering about, so stick your work heads on and let’s impress the boss.” We jumped up and loaded our magazines.
I took each man through individually first of all. Later on, we would do it in pairs, and then as a team if we had time. Nig was first up. He held his weapon in his shoulder ready to fire.
“Are you ready, Nig?”
“Yes, Boss! Let’s go for it: I’m ready.”
“Ok, when you’re ready, set off!”
He put one foot in front of the other, and we were off. His attitude had changed drastically. He stalked his prey like a lion placing each foot carefully in front of the other; his finger was pressed tightly against the trigger, just waiting to take his first shot. I saw the first target pop up; it was the size of a small adult. He dropped down to one knee and let rip a full magazine into the target.
“Changing mag!” He replaced his magazine with a full one and then shoved his empty down his smock. He continued on, treading carefully, as each step counted. The next target popped up from behind the bush. Again, he dropped to one knee and let another magazine go. He ripped it to fucking pieces. I replaced the magazine, stood up, and continued onwards, standing behind him and continuously updating him. I pulled out a thunder flash, lobbing it just as the next target popped up; he dived down, releasing a full magazine into the target. He never missed a shot.
“Stop!” I called an end to Exercise. Then I called for the weapon to be made safe, which meant the rifleman was to unload the rifle for a safety inspection by the direction staff, i.e. me! The rifleman would check his safety catch, making sure that it was on safe, then unload the magazine, placing it back inside his pouch. He would eject the cartridge from the main body, look inside for any further rounds and after putting the working parts forwards, release the trigger to ensure he had cleared the weapon for a final inspection.
I briefed him on the way back to the starting point. He did bloody well and I was very impressed by the way he pinpointed his targets so quickly and emptied the mag so accurately.
“Well done Nig! Who’s next then?” Stan stood up. All the lads gave him shit as he did.
“Right Stan, keep calm, be professional and do a great job!
“Right! When you’re ready, mate!”
He stepped forward. The first target popped up. I made things harder for him by throwing two thunder flashes either side of him. It never even put him off. He got down, checked for his target and obliterated it with a double tap: I could not have asked for more. I was more concerned walking back when he tripped over a piece of wood sticking out of the ground, which sent him sprawling! I couldn’t help but give him a right roasting for being such a dopey cunt. Nig and Keith were taking the piss out of him with no let-up. Don’t worry – he got some shit for that one!
Keith was up next: my God did that man work hard! I threw everything I had at him but he did not let himself down once. I was fucking proud of my men.
Next up was pairs, and then as a squad. We worked hard all morning to achieve our goals. By the end of the morning I was a fucking happy man. After a good rest we kicked straight back into assault tactics for the afternoon. Each man was allocated a task and the exercise began. My first task was radio training. They tested us on how quickly we could put a radio back together and send a situation report to a designated call sign. We were taught how to use the radio frequencies, emergency procedures etc. The training team gave us an hour off for a break. We got the brews on and chatted amongst ourselves for a while. Stan got his head down for ten minutes: he loved a little nap!
At 22:00hrs our night exercise started. Our job was to patrol to a grid reference on our 1:25000 maps, locate our position, and set up an observation post. We had been given just twenty-four hours to gather as much Intel as possible and escape to higher ground. There was an allied force tasked with helping us to evade capture, and which would meet us at the extraction point. It sounded easy to me. We tabbed six kilometres North-West to our first Rendezvous point, or as we like to call it, RV1. Keith was Point Man, Stan was Second, I was Third Man and Nig was at the rear. We carried around seventy pounds worth of kit each, sharing the radio batteries between us, as they were heavy. We had one twenty-four hour ration pack and plenty of drinking water to keep us going. Nig had brought along his fags; he knew he would not be able to smoke any, but they were there for medicinal purposes! It was his weakness.
We rested up at RV1, Stan drank from his canteen bottle with everyone else soon following suit. I looked about. The ground was solid, just sand and rock with the occasional piece of vegetation dotted here and there. A carcass of a goat lay just in front of me and a colony of ants walked past. The wind began to pick up.
“Come on, let’s go.”
We stood up, placed our bergans on our backs and set off to RV2, which was a further seven kilometres away. The wind was picking up something horrible, blowing sand into my face, which was somewhat annoying.
“I really feel like having a fag now, boys,” said Nig.
“Bugger off, Nig, you twat!” He continued to grunt. (I snapped!)
We arrived at our next RV on time with the wind still bashing down on us. It was pitch-black outside, the moon hidden by clouds. The occasional star presented itself now and again, but only sporadically.
“Right, let’s do it then, men! You know the score, lads: let’s get it cracked!”
We found our observation point, a small hollow plantation about five hundred metres above a small barn. The place was empty, for now anyway. I looked at my watch; it was my turn to stag on (take my position to observe and protect my team). I put my weapon down by my side and took control of the binos. The daytime picture was somewhat different from what I imagined last night. Last night I’d pictured just one barn surrounded by rock and dust in the middle of nowhere: I was wrong, bloody wrong. We should never judge a book by its cover. In fact, it was quite the opposite. There were two barns, one small and one large. A fence surrounded the entire estate. The fields were green in certain areas and the buildings were occupied. At night in the field is the best time for a soldier, you are more aware and alert; it also gives the soldier on the ground more cover to manoeuvre. In the day light he must go to ground, and mentally consolidate what he has learnt in daylight so he can use it in the evening!
A car came up the track. A disgusting shit-tip of a motor. One driver and a passenger. We continued to observe our front until the sun went down.
“Write the lot down, Stan.” He got out his notebook and jotted away. I decided enough was enough and packed up. We walked out after clearing up and destroying all evidence at around 23:30hrs that night. We patrolled down to the bridge, which took us as least thirty minutes. A vehicle was closing in, getting faster and faster. We were very lucky that we had rocks and debris to get in amongst; the rest of the area was plain. The truck turned to face us and the driver put on his full beam and tooted his horn six times. Two masked men let lose two dogs. They started running our way, and were picking up speed. One soldier let lose a couple of rounds and, this put the shits up us.
“Come on, move it, you buggers, now!” We had been compromised!
We legged-it as fast and as hard as we could: the fuckers were on our tail. We had to reach high ground by half one to meet our allies; if we were late, then we were buggered. They were gaining on us. They had less kit than we did, probably carrying only their weapons, we on the other hand were carrying seventy-plus pounds of shit.
Keith egged us on. “Come on, you reprobates! Move it, get up that bloody hill! We’re nearly there.” He pushed us bloody hard.
We had hit the top only to find ourselves alone: there was no allied friendly force. My only other option was
to about turn and fight our approaching enemy. Stan and Nig looked at me, checked their magazines, and got down into the firing position. We were at an advantage, as they were coming up hill and we were firing down.
“Hold your fire, men! Hold your fire! Let them come to us.” I was breathing very heavily. I could see the first soldier. “Fire!” I fired 30 blank rounds at my target dropping him to the floor. They had been demolished, and as we got up and regrouped our allied unit arrived to our rescue.
“Stop! End Ex!” The whistle went and the exercise was over. The boss pulled me to one side and gave me a fucking good bollocking! It was all pre-planned anyhow; they just wanted to see how we reacted to a compromise. I still got a fucking good rifting for it, though – the wankers!
I patted my boys on the back and walked over to the four-ton lorry waiting for us at the bottom of the valley.
When we got to the bottom of the hill our boss called me over for a chat.
“You’re going back up. Not good enough mate. Repeat!” I kept my mouth shut and got on with it. The lads moaned like fuck. It was our job, we were professional soldiers. Six hours later we had finally passed. The wankers were happy at last!
Arriving back at camp by 06:00hrs that morning, we were completely fucked. I had the biggest headache ever! I was very surprised to hear that we were ordered to report back at 15:00hrs that afternoon after we’d sorted our kit out and got our heads down for a few hours. The boss wanted to brief us up.
The wind had picked up again and my eyes were stinging. I belted it as fast as I could without being caught up in nature’s beastly elements. Then closing the flaps behind me, I walked into a tent full of fumes from the boss’s camping stove.
“What you got cooking then, boss?”
“I started it earlier: it’s taken me forever just to bring it to the boil.”
“That looks bloody marvellous that, boss, I haven’t had a stew in ages.”
“Sod off, Michael, and make your bloody own!”
Stan and Nig turned up together.
“Where the hell have you two been?”
“We were having a power nap!”
We poured ourselves a hot brew and the boss had a couple of plain biscuits to dunk.
“Come and sit down then, men! Let’s get this over and done with.”
We sat down on our plastic chairs, Stan rocking backwards and forwards on his. We laughed our socks off when it collapsed and he plummeted to the floor. Stan went a little red in the cheeks, the silly sod!
“Right, lads, calm down! Let’s crack on.” We took our seats once more.
Marc, an ex-army commando, came and sat down next to me. He wanted to borrow a pen, so I lent him mine. Marc was part of the Joint Services Intelligence Cell. It was his job to brief us men about the current situations brewing in country. We got out our notebooks and prepared for the briefing. Marc was from St Helena Island, just west of Namibia, Africa. He was born in a town called Jamestown, south of the Island. He had spent his childhood fishing, and it was not long before he set sail and fished for a career in the high seas. Marc’s father passed away at home in bed when Marc was sixteen: he died of cancer. His mother still lived on the Island and was alive and well. The British Army and the Special Forces recruited Marc in the spring of 1994, and in 1996 Marc joined the Intelligence Corps attached to the Special Forces.
“Right, men, let’s get cracking on. Tonight I am going to give you a briefing about ‘Operation Sombre.’ I want you to take notes and pin those ears back, as what I tell you tonight will be very significant to your duties here in Iraq.
I could still hear the wind outside battering the sides of the tent. Marc sparked up a fag and blew the smoke up into the tent’s ceiling.
“The first team, led by you, Sergeant Fox, will prepare for patrols commencing in three days. Captain Ralf-Marshall and I will lead the second and third patrols.”
“Our mission is to dominate Al-Qaida by bringing the fight to them. We will deploy to high ground, by Black Hawk and then by foot, then tab in and deploy fixed observation posts watching over caves, roads, villages etc.”
“What support do we have, boss?” Marc stood up and walked to the front of the class. He stood very calmly. His hair was jet black and there was a hint of mixed race to him. He was rather a ladies’ man. Marc placed his note book on the desk, looked up at the boys, and introduced himself in a no-nonsense manner.
“Bugger all, Nigel; sod all, apart from the men on the ground with you. You will be going into enemy held territory and you will be on your own. There will be no doubt of that.” We just smiled. A typical answer really.
“We’ll be going in by Black Hawk to this grid reference here on the map. This is a black-ops mission, folks. Do you all understand that?” We all looked up at Marc. He was switched on to fuck! The briefing went on for a further hour. Each man knew what his job was, and I was a very happy boy.
“Michael, get sorted with Steve in a bit and get your shit together. Ok, Mate?”
“Sound, Boss!”
“That’s all I have to say, men. Thank you for your time.”
We ran back to our bunks. The storm had calmed down a little, but a thick pile of sand and other shit had collected against the hangar door, nonetheless. I was going to fill Stan’s boots up with sand but decided he’d had enough for one day, bless him! Once settled in for the night I wrote a letter home to Hannah, telling her that I missed her and that if anything should happen to me then she should move on without looking back. I wanted her to throw a party in my honour, and then get out on the town and celebrate a little. When I’d finished my letter, I handed it over to Lionel, our quartermaster, who was in charge of all materials, parts and bodies in the squadron. If I were to die, he would post it to Hannah. I rang her one last time and explained that I would not be phoning for a while as something had come up. I told her nothing: she was a bright girl; she knew the score.
My Bergen weighed in excess of 100lb, carrying food and water, spare ammo and radio batteries. I dumped all my kit outside the hangar and watched Nig light his fag up. He blew the smoke into my face and then smiled at me, the cheeky shit! The chopper landed next to us and the pilot jumped out and ran past me. He was running to the toilets in distress – busting apparently. The boys and I dumped our kit in the back of the chopper and hung round for five minutes; Nig got a last fag in before we took off. The pilot looked round at us from inside his cockpit.
“Are you boys ready to go?” I nodded and smiled with the thumbs up; he then turned around, waved at the ground crew and we began to ascend.
It was 23:23hrs, Friday 5th May, and it was freezing cold in the cabin. I put my hands in my pockets and rubbed them against my crutch to keep them warm. Stan and my boys looked happy; Nig was wanking… I think! It looked like it from where I was anyhow.
We were flying low level. The pilot was very aggressive with his manoeuvres, and we were up and down like a yoyo. The door gunner told me to put on my headphones, as the pilot wanted a word.
“Hello, is this live?” The pilot enquired. “Can you hear me?”
“Hi, and yes, we are live!” He laughed, a little.
“So, we’ll be landing hard. We’ll have a twenty second window on the ground, so you can get all your kit off etc.”
“Ok, Boss! Sounds good to me.”
“Well, good luck guys from all of us! Keep safe, and thank you for travelling with Chicken Airlines! Hopefully we’ll see you all soon.” He signed off the net.
The cabin suddenly went into a red glow as the white lights were switched off. This should have made Nig feel at home: it gave off the red glow of a brothel!
I got the boys to double check their kit, with each man giving me the thumbs up once they had finished, and all was looking good. Next, the door gunner gave me the thumbs up and took control of his gun. He opened the door of the chopper, and then peeked his head outside, checking for any visible dangers. The chopper banked violently from left to right, up and down, si
de to side. It was very fortunate we had our belts on, or we would have been tossed out the door! I shouted out for the men to prepare to move. The small red light we had in the back, was turned off; it gave just about enough light to read a map. We were now flying blind, relying on the skills of the pilot to take us down successfully. I could see the door gunner’s lips moving. He must have been relaying messages back to the pilot. I felt the bird hit the deck, automatically grabbed my kit and bunged it out the door. My men were out on the deck giving covering fire if needed. We got into all-round defence position: a circular field of fire in case of an insurgent attack. The bird took off into the dark sky; I could hear her for about two miles, and then silence. I checked our co-ordinates; it was very rare for the RAF to have actually landed in the correct location. They’d normally fuck it up. In my own opinion, the navy were a much better class, but that’s just my opinion!
I stayed on the deck for a few minutes taking my bearings, then got on the comms and relayed a message to check our kit. Once I got everything sorted, we quickly started tabbing to high ground. We needed to be at RV1 by early morning, no later than 04:00hrs. The ground was thick, tough going. It was a field full of rock and gravel with the odd bit of bush growing. It was not long before the cold bit right through my body: We had to grin and bear it and move hard through the night.
Our first objective was to operate an OP (Observation Post); we were to cover an Intelligence led position on the eastern edge of Dakar Ridge. From the top, we could set up a twenty-four hour observation post, clocking anything that moved, (as per Marc’s briefing). The going was tough but we got through it. By the time we arrived, we were soaking with sweat from head to foot.
On reaching RV1, we immediately set up our OP; Nig then confirmed by a short, sharp burst radio transmission that we were in position.
I took up first post whilst the lads got their heads down. I could see the sun rising in the distance: it looked somewhat appealing, all things considered, and Hannah would have loved it. The traffic was somewhat low at this point of the day, just a few goat-herders with their flocks and the odd vehicle that was so beat-up, you wouldn’t be able to recognise their make anyhow.
Sabre Six : File 51 Page 7
