The One That Got Away - Junior edition

by Chris Ryan

  The back of the Herc was packed full of equipment, netted and strapped down on pallets. As I sat on one of the web seats, the first person I saw was Mel, a young signaller from 22 SAS. The flight sergeant knew where Mel came from – so when he saw us together, he realized that I was SAS and that he’d put his foot in it. I tried to find out from Mel if there was any news of the rest of the patrol. There was none.

  Four hours later I landed in Riyadh for the second time. I was put up in a hotel, where the Director – the brigadier in command of Special Forces – came to visit me. He was a ‘B’ Squadron man himself, and he saw my escape as a feather in the squadron’s cap. First thing next morning, he said, I was to fly up to Al Jouf on a Hercules. And that was what I’d been waiting for.

  I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that there was no news of the others. Because the Iraqis had not announced the capture of any prisoners behind the lines, it seemed more and more likely that they were all dead. Everyone kept asking me what had happened, but the truth was that I wanted to know the score as much as them.

  In the morning I dressed in my clean uniform, which had been through the washing machine at the embassy in Damascus. It felt good to have it on again. My feet were still pretty sore, but I got my boots back on, and so looked quite presentable.

  As the aircraft landed at Al Jouf I was so excited by the thought of seeing the guys again that I went and stood on the tailgate as it was dropping down, ready to rush out and greet them. But to my surprise there was only one man there – Geordie, the Squadron Sergeant Major. He had told everyone else to keep away, in case I was overwhelmed by emotion. In fact, three of the guys had ignored his instructions and were hovering in the background. As I walked out, they came racing across and surrounded me, hammering me on the back, and calling out, ‘Well done!’

  For a minute or two I couldn’t really speak. One of the guys was so shattered by my appearance that he burst into tears. In place of the fit, bouncing young fellow he’d seen off a couple of weeks earlier, here was a prematurely aged cripple, broken, bent and shuffling. He said I looked like a bag of bones.

  Geordie thinned the guys out and took me to one side. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to go into headquarters for the debriefing.’

  The HQ was housed in tents next to the permanent control-tower buildings. Before we went in, Geordie asked if there was anything I wanted to tell him first. I said, ‘Yeah, there’s quite a bit. I’ll tell you what actually happened, but I’m not going to mention it all in the debrief.’ So I told him about Vince losing heart. ‘If Andy or any of the others come out, they’ll confirm it,’ I said. ‘Until then, we’ll just leave it.’

  ‘Fine,’ Geordie said, and we went in.

  The debrief lasted two hours. Once it was over, Geordie drove me round the airfield to the squadron location. On the way he asked, ‘First things first: d’you want to go home?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to stay here and find out what’s happened.’ The last thing I wanted to do was desert the team.

  It was then that Geordie told me what had happened to the other two Bravo patrols: they’d both come straight back.

  When Bravo Three Zero took stock of their location, the commander immediately decided that the area was impossibly dangerous. There wasn’t enough cover to conceal the vehicles, so they immediately began to drive back towards the Saudi border – a journey which took them two nights. Afterwards the commander was fiercely criticized, not least because he ignored an instruction to RV with ‘D’ Squadron – who were already in Iraq and needing reinforcement – not far off his route.

  Bravo One Zero stayed an even shorter time. When the Chinook landed at their drop-off point, the pilot said to the leader, ‘Pete – d’you want to have a look around while I hang on a minute? I can’t see any depressions or wadis for miles. It’s like a billiard table.’ To prove his point, the pilot flew twenty kilometres up and down, trying to find some broken ground into which he could drop the patrol, but the desert remained horribly bare.

  Pete took a decision which struck me as very brave. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’re not staying here. We’re flying out.’

  Back at Al Jouf people said he was a coward. But I and many others reckoned that of all the decisions taken by the three patrol commanders, his needed the most courage. A year later people would start to say: ‘Well, maybe he did the right thing after all’ – but at the time he suffered.

  It was a big surprise for me to hear that none of the three planned OPs (observation posts) had therefore been set up.

  Bravo Two Zero’s comms failure had been due mainly to the fact that we’d been given the wrong radio frequencies. This was not the fault of anyone in the Regiment, but of the signals unit attached to us. The result was that although three of Legs’ messages got through in garbled form, no reply ever reached us.

  I also found that our TACBEs didn’t perform the way we’d been told. Their effective range was only about 120 kilometres, and there were no Coalition aircraft within 500 kilometres to the east. During the night of 24 January – our first on the run – one American F-15 pilot had picked up a call from Andy, and he passed it on. But because the call came from a location our HQ was not expecting, it only caused confusion.

  When the patrol went missing, the guys in the squadron wanted to mount a rescue mission. When the CO refused to commit one of his few precious helicopters immediately to the task, some of the guys were on the verge of mutiny. But in the circumstances middle and senior management agreed that the CO was right to delay a search until the patrol’s situation became clearer.

  The main problem was that HQ was expecting us to strike back for the Saudi border if in trouble.

  But we had set off in exactly the opposite direction.

  By 26 January it was clear that something had gone seriously wrong so action was taken. At 1745 that evening a Chinook took off from Arar, with five members of the squadron on board, in an attempt to pull us out. That mission was aborted when the weather got bad.

  The next day, a team went in on board an MH-53 helicopter. It flew within five or six kilometres of our original emergency rendezvous point before flying down the most likely escape-and-evasion route to the Saudi border, and almost running out of fuel in the process.

  A third search-and-rescue mission was mounted on 30 January, but this was also aborted when the pilot fell ill. The CO continued trying to arrange further searches until, in the early hours of 1 February, he heard that I had turned up in Damascus. It was obvious then that none of the patrol could still be trying to return to Saudi.

  More cheerful news was that ‘A’ and ‘D’ Squadrons had crossed the border in force just one night after our insertion, and were creating havoc among mobile Scud launchers and communications towers. Their key weapon was the M19 – in effect, a machine gun firing bombs at the rate of three or four per second. The ammunition was the same as in our 203s, except that the rounds contained more high-explosive. When volleys of those things began bursting all around them, the Iraqis turned and ran.

  At 2300 the CO said he wanted to see me. I went to one of the control rooms, and was there until two in the morning, being debriefed for a second time. At the end he asked, ‘Is there anything you think you should have done?’

  That nearly cracked me up. I almost burst into tears as I said, ‘I should have tied Vince to me.’

  ‘Listen,’ said the CO. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  Then he asked if I’d mind going up to Arar, to talk to ‘A’ Squadron of Delta Force, the American Special Forces unit, which was about to deploy behind the lines. It meant leaving at 0530 – in about three hours’ time – so I went straight back to my tent and got my head down. As I climbed into my sleeping bag, the CO draped a big goatherd’s coat over me. I felt like a little kid.

  Apart from my night in Cyprus, that was the first time since the contact that I slept soundly. I don’t know whether it was because I felt secure at last, but the next thing I knew, Geordi
e was shaking my shoulder. He’d already cooked a fried breakfast with the light on, but I’d been out for the count and hadn’t noticed a thing. So we had sausages and bacon and a cup of tea, and set out at 0530 in a Land Rover, accompanied by Gus, an American liaison officer.

  All the way up, as it got lighter, Gus was picking information out of me. We’d met before, in Hereford when he’d come to the UK to command one of the squadrons. (At that time I was Sniper Team Commander, in charge of all the high-rise options – climbing and abseiling on the outsides of buildings, inside lift-wells, or ascending glass buildings on suckers.) Delta’s target was the area around the nuclear refinery, and whenever we came to a new kind of terrain during our drive, he asked if the ground where they were heading resembled what we could see. I found I was able to describe the different areas well.

  The journey took nearly three hours. Then, in the control room at Arar, I met Major General Wayne Downing, Commander of US Special Forces, who’d recently flown in to supervise operations. Slim, fit-looking, with a crew-cut, he looked just like you’d imagine a successful American soldier to look. He shook my hand and introduced me to four or five other officers. We sat down on sofas round a coffee table, Downing thanked me for coming up, and I told them what had happened. When I finished, there was silence.

  ‘That’s the most amazing story I’ve heard in years,’ Downing said. There was a pause, and he asked, ‘What have the doctors said?’

  ‘Well – I haven’t seen a proper doctor yet.’

  He seemed shocked. ‘I sure am sorry to have dragged you up here,’ he said, looking worried and a bit embarrassed. ‘You ought to have seen a doctor before you came. Tell you what, though: we’ve got some go-faster surgeons on the base. I’ll have one of them look at you.’

  I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by a ‘go-faster’ surgeon, but I went to see one of them willingly enough. A quick examination confirmed that I had frost-nip in my fingers and toes. The doctor said that my feet would heal up in time, but that I needed some dental work done. When I told him about the nuclear effluent, he said I should certainly have a blood test.

  When I got back to Downing, he said, ‘I know I’m asking a lot, but will you talk to ‘A’ Squadron? They’re deploying tonight, and I know they’d appreciate it. You could probably give them a load of help.’

  Of course I agreed. So I told the story yet again, this time to about forty guys, and at the end they burst into applause, with everyone wanting to shake my hand.

  Back at Al Jouf, I found myself wondering with other guys in the squadron about what could have happened to the rest of our patrol. I think I believed in my heart of hearts that Vince was dead, and Stan the same – or possibly captured. But I couldn’t understand why the other five hadn’t come out, or why there was no news of them.

  People began to assume that the rest of the patrol had died, and I heard that I would probably have to go on a tour of New Zealand, Australia and all round England to talk to the families of the guys we’d lost.

  In spite of everything, I felt reasonably well – so when ‘B’ Squadron began getting ready to drive into Iraq as the security force on a major re-supply for ‘A’ and ‘D’, I asked the CO if I could go with them. Luckily he realized that I was a long way from being fit, and said, ‘Not a chance.’

  Because my teeth were still so slack, I made arrangements to see a dentist. Before my appointment, I was warned that I mustn’t under any circumstances tell him where I’d been. When I got into the surgery, the dentist proved a really sensible, nice guy. He asked his assistant to leave the room. ‘There’s obviously something wrong,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I’ve had a bad eight days.’

  ‘I should say so. What do you do for a living?’

  ‘I test Land Rovers.’

  ‘OK. I’m not interested in what you’ve done. But your mouth’s in a serious state. Your gums show signs of malnutrition; they’re receding – that’s why they’re bleeding. I can see the roots of your teeth. There’s a chance you’ll lose a few. I’ll have to take two out, anyway.’

  To this day my gums haven’t fully recovered; some teeth are still loose. Otherwise, I made a full physical recovery, though it took six weeks for feeling to come back into my fingers and toes.

  A blood test taken in a makeshift hospital on an American airbase revealed nothing wrong – but evidently the doctor who did it missed something, because another test, carried out in the UK, showed that I had a blood disorder, caused by drinking dirty water from the Euphrates.

  One doctor, talking about weight loss, told me that it was safe to shed one pound – or about half a kilo – a week. When I told him I’d lost 36 lb, or about 16 kg, in a week, he said it was impossible.

  ‘Well it happened,’ I told him.

  To which he replied, ‘That’s not good.’

  The mental scars took far longer to heal. In the Gulf I began to suffer from a recurrent nightmare. I’m walking through the dark along a road. Ahead of me I see two hooded figures, dressed in black, on top of a mound. I know they’re the two men I killed in the nuclear complex, but still I go up to them to ask directions. The night is very dark, and it’s as if black rain is falling. As I come close, I see the eyes of the second man, wide with fright, and at the last second a knife-blade flashes as he makes a lunge at me. At that point I wake up, sweating with terror.

  When the dream began, I realized that it was caused by feelings of guilt.

  I also felt guilty about Vince. There was I, a fully trained mountain guide, and I’d failed to do the obvious thing of tying him to me when we were going down with exposure. Even if I’d just held him by the hand, or kept him in front of me where I could see him, I might have saved him. I knew the reason was that I had been suffering from exposure too – but that couldn’t bring him back. On the other hand, he might have slowed us down so much that the cold would have got the better of us all.

  Later, when I was back in the UK, I met Vince’s mum, dad, widow and brothers, and told them the full story. It was hard for them to accept that Vince – who they had envisaged as indestructible – had frozen to death in the desert.

  On 24 February 1991, the ground war was launched at last. I spent the time glued to CNN television – there was one big set in the corridor between the hangars. When the Coalition began taking prisoners, we couldn’t believe the numbers: 20,000, 40,000, 50,000 – we kept a scoreboard.

  In five days, unbelievably, it was all over.

  The squadron came back from Al Jouf to Victor, getting ready to go home. Moves were being made to bring ‘A’ and ‘D’ Squadrons back as well. Then the OC said that as soon as an aircraft to the UK became available, I would be on it.

  Just after the ceasefire I was in one of the hangars when somebody rushed in, shouting, ‘Hey! We’ve seen Dinger on the telly!’

  Electrified, I ran back with him to see if I could catch a glimpse. There’d been shots of the Iraqis handing over Allied prisoners.

  ‘Are you sure it was him?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, it was Dinger all right.’

  We sat there, waiting for the next news programme. When it came on, someone shouted, ‘There he is!’

  Sure enough, it was Dinger – and a moment later we saw Stan as well. Both were in Baghdad. They were wearing orange prison overalls, sitting at a table, on their way to being handed over to the Red Crescent (the local equivalent of our Red Cross). It was easy enough to spot Dinger, but Stan was harder to pick out, because he had lost a lot of weight and had become quite gaunt.

  Just to see them was exciting. We knew those two were safe – but what about the others?

  There were still five men missing from Bravo Two Zero: Bob, Vince, Legs, Mark and Andy.

  In addition, we thought a guy from ‘A’ Squadron called Jack had been killed on another operation. When we heard through the Regiment that the Iraqis had four more prisoners to release, we reckoned that meant one of our guys must have died as well as Jack. Was tha
t Vince?

  Details trickled out slowly. The first to reach us, via Dinger, was that Legs had died from hypothermia after trying to cross the Euphrates. Then, to our amazement, we heard that Jack had survived, and was also about to be released. That meant that another member of Bravo Two Zero must have gone down. Rumours flew about, but there was no official information.

  Very soon after that, a message came telling us to pack. I would be on the first aircraft going home. When the Hercules landed at Cyprus and we walked into the terminal, someone said, ‘Oh – we’ve just had some of your guys come into the hospital.’ Immediately the OC got on the phone, but – quite rightly – security was tight and nobody was being allowed to speak to the released prisoners, so he had some trouble getting through. In the end he managed it, and I spoke to both Dinger and Stan.

  Their voices sounded a bit flat, and I could tell they’d been through a lot; they weren’t their normal bouncy selves. But Dinger said, ‘Look – I owe you a pint for making me keep my jacket. I reckon it saved my life.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘But what happened? How did we split?’

  ‘We heard an aircraft and went to ground. But I can’t say much now. We’ll see you when we get to the UK.’

  Obviously he didn’t want to talk on the phone, but I asked, ‘Who else is coming back?’

  ‘Andy and Mark.’

  That was all he said. It meant that, besides Legs – and, almost certainly, Vince – Bob Consiglio had gone.

  I felt very sad about Bob, good, tough little guy that he was – and immediately I wanted to know what had happened to him.

  I also had a brief word with Stan. ‘Hey,’ I told him. ‘You made the wrong decision back there.’

  ‘I know,’ he agreed. ‘I owe you a few pints on that. I should have stayed with you. I really should have stayed . . .’