Michael Asher

by The Real Bravo Two Zero

  CHAPTER two THANKS TO THE UN SANCTIONS there were no scheduled flights to Baghdad and we were obliged to drive in overland from Amman, Jordan, in cumbersome GMC vehicles provided by our fixers, Goran and Deilan: trim, energetic, quick-witted young Kurdish brothers who had worked for the BBC before shifting to escorting-visit�ing film-crews. We left Amman on a hot day in May, and soon the built-up suburbs of the city fell away, to be replaced by the green, brown and red plains of the desert, a desolation stretching as far as the eye could see on both' sides. Although this desert spans part of Syria, Jordan and Iraq, it is all of one piece geographically, and is prop�erly referred to as the Badiyat Ash-Sham, or the Syrian Desert. Around 3000 BC, when the pyramids were being built in Egypt, the fringes of this desert were inhabited by a people called the Amorites, who had cattle, donkeys, sheep and goats. A thousand years later, having acquired the camel, the Amorites were able to colonize the desert interior, and so the Badu � literally, the people of the Badiya, now known as the Bedouin � were born. When most people think of deserts, they imagine sand dunes rolling on endlessly like the waves of a sea, but the Syrian Desert is nothing like that: in fact, there is very lit�tle sand. It is more like desolate, arid moorland, basically rocky or muddy, with stunted hills and high plateaux here and there, occasionally cut by steep-sided wadis. Although there are virtually no trees, the soil is fertile, raising sparse desert vegetation and often cultivated by the Bedouin after the rains On the way to the Iraqi border we passed through Azraq, once a beautiful oasis of palm trees around a silver pool, and the site of the Roman castle that was T. E. Lawrence's base during his desert campaigns of 1917-18. The castle is still there, almost lost among streets of breeze-block housing, and a brief visit reminded me of the long experience the British had of fighting in this desert. Lawrence himself provided a comprehensive handbook on campaigning here, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which outlines the extreme conditions to be experienced in this desert in winter. 'Nothing in Arabia could be more cutting than the north wind,' Lawrence wrote. 'It blew through our clothes as if we had none, fixed our fingers into claws.' Describing how he had to light fires under camels' bellies to revive them in the biting cold, Lawrence also said he sometimes had to drag his Bedouin soldiers up by their hair to prevent them from falling into the stu�por that hypothermia brings. 'The winter's power drove leaders and men into the villages,' he wrote. 'Twice I ven�tured up to taste the snow-laden plateau . . . but life there was not tolerable. In the day it thawed a little, but at night it froze. The wind cut open the skin: fingers lost power and sense of feel: cheeks shivered like dead leaves until they could shiver no more, then bound up muscles in a witless ache . . . ' Seventy years later, McNab echoed Lawrence, writing, 'I had known cold before, in the Arctic, but noth�ing like this. This was lying in a freezer cabinet feeling your body heat slowly slip away." Although McNab says that 1991 saw the coldest winter in the region in thirty years, winter temperatures in the western desert are com�monly below freezing, and have been known to dip to an incredible minus fourteen degrees .Celsius. Bearing in mind that two of the patrol reportedly died of hypother�mia, it seemed to me that Lawrence's experience might have proved a lesson worth learning. Although David Stirling is credited with founding the SAS, the principles on which the Regiment operates were developed by Lawrence during the Arab campaign in 1916-17 against the Ottoman Turks. The Turks' lifeline in Arabia was the Hejaz railway, completed in 1908, which connected their garrisons there with the outside world. But the railway ran through 800 miles of desert in which the Bedouin could come and go as they pleased. Lawrence saw that the way to victory for irregular fight�ers was not to confront superior forces, but to hit the enemy with a small, mobile force at its weakest points �bridges, locomotives, watering-stations � and run away into the desert where the Turks could not follow. He had discovered desert power. It was this strategy that David Stirling took up when he formed L Detachment of the Special Air Service Brigade in North Africa in 1941. When his original idea of dropping trained saboteurs by parachute failed, however, he turned to the real desert experts, the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), who had perfected the techniques of desert motoring and navigation. With the LRDG as their transport and navi-gation arm, SAS patrols were able to hit enemy airfields and supply dumps and disappear back into the desert, just as Lawrence had done on his camels. The raiding part�nership between the LRDG and the SAS was brilliantly successful, and accounted for more German aircraft on the ground than the -RAF did in the air. The key to desert power, whether by camel or car, was mobility. As the. CO of the LRDG, Guy Prenderghast, told Stirling after his first abortive parachute drop, 'Once actually on the ground, a .party of men moving about on foot in the desert cannot get far.' The SAS is proud of its history and traditions, yet some of the very principles on which it had been founded seem to have been forgotten in the Bravo Two Zero affair. THE OFFICIALS AT THE IRAQI border were gruff, but no gruffer than such men are almost everywhere, and the formalities took up no more than an hour and a half. The only bugbear was the compulsory AIDS test, which none of us had particularly been looking forward to, but for which we had prepared by bringing our own sterile nee-dles. As it happened, we didn't need them. A judicious handshake from our twenty-two-year-old Kurdish fixer, Goran, seemed to have settled the matter. Once through the frontier checkpoints, it was as if a prison door had slammed shut behind us, and it was difficult to rid myself of the idea that we were entering enemy territory. Perhaps it was the succession of giant portraits of a stern-looking Saddam Hussein that set my mind on edge, but it was an effort to forget that some dark things had hap-pened in this country not so long ago. No doubt they were still happening. Goran told me that the Iraqi national football team had recently lost a match against Turkestan. Way, the President's son, and Chairman of the team, had had his players tortured to make sure they never lost again. The story made me laugh, until I remembered that there was no British Embassy in Baghdad to run to if things went wrong. From now on we were on our own. The light was already dwindling as we sped away from the border along a superbly built multi-lane highway with virtually no other traffic on it, taking us straight into the heart of Iraq. The highway had been constructed by a German company and had been completed, but not opened, by the time the Gulf War broke out. In January 1991 it had proved a major obstacle to a motorized SAS patrol � commanded by RSM Peter Ratcliffe � which had needed to cross it in order to reach the target, a missile command and control station nicknamed Victor Two. The desert here was punctuated by the black tents of Bedouin, who, but for the motor vehicles parked outside, appeared to be living much the same lives as their Amorite ancestors had 4,000 years ago. As darkness descended across the desert I fell asleep in the passenger seat, and when I woke again we were in Baghdad. Having seen the surreal, shell-shocked streets of west Beirut in the early 1990s, I had been expecting something similar in Baghdad. In fact it was a bustling, pleasant, modern city on the banks of the Tigris, with well-stocked shops and packed restaurants, showing few scars of the Allied bombing of recent years. There was nothing more out of the ordinary, indeed, than the occasional S60 anti-aircraft battery on the high buildings. There was no heavy military or police presence on the streets, and we were allowed to come and go without restrictions, wandering across the Tigris bridges � all rebuilt since 1991 � and through the flea-market and Ottoman bazaars. The first thing that struck me about the Iraqis was their extreme friendliness and courtesy. I'd been prepared by-the western media for fanatics capable of lynching a foreigner at the drop of a hat. Instead, I found open, ordinary, civilized folk getting on with their lives as best they could, without any apparent animosity towards me at all. Twice I entered an old teashop in the centre of Baghdad � a place of crude wooden benches, with a bank of gas-jets heating water in battered brass vessels, where men sat chatting quietly or nodding over hookah-pipes. Several men came over to ask me where I was from, and when I told them, they questioned me without the slight�est hint
of malice. There was little obvious poverty in the main streets, but UN officials had recently reported an alarming rise in infant mortality, and unemployment in Baghdad was reckoned to be at fifty per cent. The soups were full of valuable items that were going for a song � gold watches, cameras, Dunhill cigarette-lighters � no doubt ditched by their owners in a desperate last attempt to get some capi-tal. It was as if the contents of everyone's attics had suddenly hit the market at rock-bottom prices. For six dollars I bought a British-made prismatic compass in per-fect condition, which in London would have cost me three hundred dollars. The features I encountered most frequently were the ubiquitous portraits of Saddam Hussein, which glared or smiled down from every street corner. These portraits represented the President in various guises: the paternal Saddam cuddling a child, the military Saddam in bemedalled uniform, the Arab prince in stately robes, the Iraqi Fellah in knotted headcloth, the sociable Saddam squatting with a glass of tea, the devout Saddam per-forming his prayers, and the westernized, modern Saddam resplendent in a white suit � there was even a relaxed Saddam talking on the telephone. There was something for almost everyone here � a man for all sea�sons, I thought. The real Saddam, however, appeared to be keeping a low profile, and sometimes I began to won�der if he actually existed at all. Uday was the number two or three at the Ministry of Information, a grave-looking man who had been a pro-fessional journalist in Paris before the war, and who had the rather disconcerting habit of addressing me as 'my dear'. In his spacious but spartan office on the top floor of the Ministry building he welcomed us with a prepared speech about the resilient nature of the Iraqi people and how you could not defeat a nation with a civilization going back 6,000 years. It was propaganda, but I took his point. The earliest civilizations known to man �Babylon, Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and others � had flour�ished in the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris thousands of years before Christ. Beside them, even the ancient Egyptians were newcomers, and the British and Americans little more than literate barbarians. When I went over what I had come here to do, and emphasized that I wanted to follow the routes of the Bravo Two Zero patrol on foot, he shook his head and looked worried. `That is difficult,' he said. 'Very difficult indeed.' I assumed he had thought it would be enough for me to pursue my research in Baghdad. When I continued, say�ing that I hoped to find eyewitnesses � the shepherd-boy Ryan and McNab said had spotted them, the driver of the bulldozer who had approached their LUP, local mili�tia involved in the initial firefight, the driver of the taxi they had hijacked, witnesses of the battles the patrol had fought near the Syrian border, the men who found Vince Phillips's body, personnel who had interrogated the patrol � he actually laughed. 'I have read your CV, my dear,' he said. 'You should know very well that people such as this shepherd-boy are nomads. They move on all the time. It is very unlikely that they will be in the same place now, and how will you find them? As for the mili�tary personnel involved, we are talking about ten years ago, when we had a huge conscript army. Since then peo�ple have died and moved all round the country, records have been lost or burned or blown up, and the whole sys�tem of administration has been changed. How will you find a taxi driver when you don't know the man's name or even the number of his car? There are thousands of taxi drivers in Iraq. You are looking for needles in haystacks � it is most unlikely that you Will find any eyewitnesses. Why don't you stay in Baghdad, shoot some film here instead?' I left his office feeling depressed. Nobody in the Ministry of Information seemed to have heard of the SAS or Bravo Two Zero. In the scale of a war in which at least 100,000 Iraqis died and 63,000 were captured, I real-ized suddenly, an eight-man patrol was very small fry indeed. And yet McNab wrote that the patrol had accounted for at least two hundred and fifty Iraqi casual�ties, so someone, somewhere, must have felt the impact of the operation. For the next few days I hung around the hotel discon�solately waiting for news, and it began to occur to me that the Iraqis had no intention of letting me wander around their deserts. The government had applied for the UN sanctions to be lifted again and in some quarters opinion was shifting in their favour. Probably, I reflected gloomily, they had seen an opportunity to get a British film-crew into Baghdad and score some sympathetic foreign cover�age free of charge. My mood wasn't heightened when Ahmad, a stringy, reserved and rather morose man from the Ministry of Information, suggested a visit to the Amiriya Bunker to pass the time. It was a civic air-raid shelter situated in a residential area of Baghdad that had been hit by American missiles in February 1991, and 400 civilians � among them many children � had been killed. It was a sobering experience, to say the least. The place had been left almost exactly as it was when it had been hit, with a vast hole punched through a roof of stressed concrete ten feet thick. The walls and floor were still blackened from the blast, and Ahmad told me that the rescue services hadn't been able to open the vast steel doors, so by the time they had cut through them with oxyacetylene torches, most of the survivors had been burned to ashes. Actually, the bunker had been hit by two laser-guided missiles: an incendiary rocket that had come through the air-vent and the explosive missile which had caused the gaping wound in the roof. Photos of the dead children decorated the walls, as well as pictures of the scorched and mutilated bodies being removed. The Coalition had claimed that the bunker was being used by Saddam Hussein's military command, and even that the apparent civilian casualties had been 'invented' by the Iraqis. However, foreign reporters who were allowed to inspect the place at the time found no evidence that it had been used by the military, and Alan Little of the BBC, who watched the mangled bodies being carried out, concluded that this was something totally beyond the ability of the Iraqi Ministry of Information to stage-manage. 'This morning we saw the charred and mutilated remains of those nearest the door,' he told viewers. 'They were piled into the back of a truck: many were barely recognizable as human. Men from the district pushed and jostled through the crowd to find news of their families, many distressed to the point of panic.' Whatever the case, Amiriya was a salutary reminder that modern war is not an affair of lone warriors, but of billions of dollars-worth of technology, and its end result is too often places like this. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for those trapped in here when the missile struck, and turned away with a shudder., The only high point of those days of waiting was when Ahmad insinuated himself into the lobby of my hotel one morning clutching a newspaper article in Arabic. The piece, dating from earlier in the year, was an interview with a man called Adnan Badawi, who had been a pas�senger in a taxi that had been hijacked by a group of `British commandos' near Krabilah in western Iraq, on 26 January 1991. The article excited me � it was the first independent evidence from an Iraqi source that the Bravo Two Zero mission had actually happened. Moreover, the article included not only Adnan's name, but that of the taxi driver and � even better � the registration number of the taxi itself. The first needle in the haystack had at least been glimpsed, if not found, and Ahmad told me that he was taking steps to contact Adnan, who lived in Mosul in the far north of Iraq. The bad news was that further per-mission from the Ministry of Defence was required before I could visit the Anbar region of western Iraq, where the action had taken place. But in any case, he concluded, I should probably be able to start on Wednesday. Wednesday came, but permission did not. Ahmad told me the expedition was rescheduled for Saturday. I had already been hanging around for more than a week and my time was slipping away. It was May, and incredibly hot in Baghdad, and if I waited any longer it would be high summer, and almost suicidal to travel on foot in the desert. I asked Ahmad for a meeting with Uday, was granted one, and went up to see him with my associate producer, Nigel Morris. 'Look, Mr Uday,' I said, as politely and firmly as I could. 'We were given visas on the basis of this project � the Bravo Two Zero story � and I sent you a full outline before we came. I understood we had permission to do it already. We have been com�pletely open about what we intended to do from the beginning and there is no secret abo
ut it. If it is not the case that we were given permission, then please tell us now Our time is running out and I have to say that unless we really do leave on Saturday we shall have to return to the UK.' Uday's face turned black and I waited for the axe to fall. I knew I was sticking my neck out; I thought of the footballers the President's son had had tortured for losing against Turkestan. 'You have to realize this country is still at war, my dear,' he said, dryly. 'We are suffering under UN sanctions and things can't be organized just like that. It is the military who are dragging their feet, not the Ministry of Information. The problem is that you cannot go into that area without a representative from the mili�tary, and nobody is going to walk in the desert at this time of year.' I smiled. 'That's no problem,' I said. 'The representa�tive can travel in our GMC vehicles with the film-crew while I walk.' `Yes,' he said. 'But then how are they going to be able to see what you get up to?' `I can rendezvous with the vehicles every few hours.' Uday considered this and said he would see what he could do. He picked up the telephone. By the time I had reached the door, he was bellowing into the receiver like a bull. CHAPTER three WE LEFT ,ON SATURDAY AS scheduled, heading north towards the Anbar region in a convoy of four GMCs with five film-crew and four drivers. There were also two mind-ers: Ali from the Ministry of Information and Abu Omar from the Ministry of Defence. The minders were so dif�ferent in personality and approach that I sometimes wondered if they were deliberately working the 'good cop, bad cop' routine. Ali, the civilian, was tall, moon-faced, pot-bellied and dishevelled-looking, an exuberant, talka�tive extrovert who spoke no English but was for ever slapping people on the back and roaring out their names. Abu Omar, the military man, was small and dapper with immaculately pressed suits and carefully combed and oiled hair. He was aloof and disdainful, taciturn to the point of rudeness, and gave the impression that the last thing in the world he needed was to accompany a bunch of Englishmen into the desert. We drove up the Euphrates Valley, through smoky industrial towns and villages hud�dling in palm groves, and halted at the area headquarters at Rumadi to meet our military escort: a detachment of six soldiers under a lieutenant, in an ordinary Toyota pick�up with a machine-gun mounted on the back. When I quizzed Ali about the escort, he told me it was for our pro�tection. The place is full of wolves and bandits,' he said. Ali had served in an infantry battalion during the Iran�Iraq war, and shivered when I asked him about it. 'It was terrible,' he said. 'It was hand-to-hand fighting, up close so you could see the enemy, butchering them with knives and bayonets, and them butchering us. May God protect us from the devil, I never again want to see any�thing like that!' The Iran�Iraq war lasted eight years, but did not resolve any of the issues over which it had been fought. Saddam Hussein's original excuse for his 1980 invasion of western Iran was to end the Iranian monopoly of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, conceded to her in a treaty of 1975. The war consisted mainly of bloody World War I-style offensives against immovable tiers of trenches, in which the attack�ers were frequently mown down like sheep. Both sides used chemical weapons, and in 1985 both began lobbing missiles against each other's capitals. In 1987 Iran made the fatal mistake of targetting Kuwaiti tankers in the Gulf, bringing down upon her the wrath of the USA, which had hitherto been covertly supplying her with weapons. Reviled by world opinion, and finding it increasingly difficult to buy arms, Iran was obliged to negotiate a peace treaty in 1988. Saddam Hussein crowed over the masses of Iranian armour and artillery his armies had captured, but it was a Pyrrhic victory: up to 1.7 million people had perished in the war, but not an inch of ground had been gained. In 1990 Kuwait, a tiny but oil-rich desert princedom on Iraq's southern border, pressed Saddam Hussein for repayment of certain loans she had made to her neigh-bour during the war. In reply, Saddam accused the Kuwaitis of contravening the OPEC agreement by over-producing oil, costing Iraq fourteen million dollars in lost revenues. He also claimed that Kuwait had been pumping crude oil from the Ramailah oilfield, whose ownership was disputed and, throwing in Iraq's traditional claim on Kuwaiti territory for good measure, invaded the prince�dom with one hundred thousand troops and twelve hundred tanks. It was 2 August 1990. The UN Security Council promptly denounced the invasion, declaring a trade embargo against Iraq, and by 14 August the spearhead brigade of the US 82nd Airborne Division had arrived in Saudi Arabia to secure the country's oil-reserves. The first phase of the Coalition operation � Desert Shield � was a protective action designed to block an Iraqi invasion of Saudi Arabia, and to gain time for a massive concentration of men and materiel from thirty-two countries, including Britain, France, Italy, Egypt, Syria, Qatar, Oman, the UAE and Bahrain, as well as Saudi Arabia and the USA. The build�up of Iraqi forces continued, however, and by November the Coalition was facing no less than twenty-six divisions in the Kuwait theatre, comprising more than 450,000 men. It -was becoming clear to Allied Commander-in�Chief H. Norman Schwarzkopf and his political bosses that nothing short of a counter-offensive would oust the Iraqis from Kuwait, and by mid-November he had final- ized his plan of attack. On 29 November the UN Security Council lit the fuse of war by authorizing the use of force if the Iraqis did not pull out of Kuwait by 15 January 1991. General Schwarzkopf, nicknamed 'The Bear', had devised a two-phase offensive against the Iraqis, desig�nated Desert Storm. First, wave after wave of Allied bombers would go in, hitting strategic targets, cutting the command infrastructure and gaining control of the skies. When this had been achieved, the Air Force would turn its attention to the Iraqi army, pounding their artillery, armour and static defences mercilessly until the morale of Saddam Hussein's troops had been comprehensively worn down. Only then would the massed divisions of the Coalition ground forces go in for the kill. Within days of the invasion of Kuwait, the two avail�able squadrons of 22 SAS, G and D, were put on standby in Hereford, and while the SAS Intelligence Unit began a frantic round of briefings and reports, G Squadron was despatched to the United Arab Emirates to begin refresher training in desert warfare. B Squadron � to which McNab and Ryan belonged � was currently hold-ing down the Regiment's Special Projects or counter-revolutionary warfare role, and A Squadron was in Columbia, training teams to fight the drug barons, but each was duly scheduled to desert retraining in turn. For the first five months of the war, the SAS had no designated role: the US 5th Special Forces Group and US Marine Corps were handling reconnaissance on the Kuwaiti frontier, and the only suitable job for the SAS that was vacant was the rescue of hostages. There were more than sixteen hundred British citizens in Iraqi cus-tody in Iraq and Kuwait, so freeing them would hardly be an easy business. Indeed, a British team tasked with plan-ning a hostage-recovery operation calculated that it would require a force of at least Brigade strength � more than three times the manpower of all three SAS Regiments combined � and would still probably result in more casualties than the number of hostages released. The plan was scrapped in December, when Saddam Hussein released the hostages anyway. A, B, and D Squadrons were all deployed in the Gulf by 2 January, but they still had no official role in the General's concept of Desert Storm. To Schwarzkopf, who had seen the bungling of US Special Forces in Vietnam and Grenada, this was to be an air and missile operation, backed up by heavy armoured and mechan�ized infantry units. What the hell could Special Forces do, he demanded, that a Stealth fighter could not? In the second week of December, the Commander of British forces in the Gulf, General Sir Peter de la Billiere � a former CO of 22 SAS � had given the Regiment -instructions to start devising plans for deep-penetration raids behind Iraqi lines, saying that they should be ready to go by 15 January. It was only shortly before this dead-line that de la Billiere managed finally to win Schwarzkopf over, with a formal presentation involving detailed maps and graphics. The SAS task, he explained, would be to 'cut roads and create diversions which would draw Iraqi forces away from the main front and sow fears in the mind of the enemy that some major operation was brewing on his right flank'.4 The presentation might have convinced Schwarzkopf, but to the Regiment
's rank and file it did not disguise the fact that there was still nothing specific for the SAS to do. It was certainly the concept upon which SAS founder David Stirling had based the original Regiment back in 1941, but since the regular unit had been reconstituted for the Malayan Emergency in 1949, it had generally used its skills for more strategic roles. But it was better than nothing: the SAS Regiment is a very expensive outfit to keep up, and despite de la Billiere's decree that he would not send in the SAS unless there was a proper job for them, this was the biggest deployment of troops since World War II and the Regiment had to be seen to earn its pay. Not since 1945 had such a large contingent of British Special Forces been assembled in one place. The SAS group had been reorganized after the Falklands War into UK Special Forces, commanded by a brigadier, and including 21 SAS, 22 SAS and 23 SAS, as well as the Royal Marines Special Boat Service (SBS), and 63 and 264 SAS Signals Squadrons. The three SAS regular `sabre' or operational squadrons 'deployed in the Gulf were supported by fifteen men of R Squadron, the little-publicized territorial unit whose members are trained to provide individual replacements for the regular squadrons in time of need. This brought the operational strength of the SAS to about three hundred men, though with special forces aircrews from the RAF, supporting arms and an SBS Squadron, the UKSF contingent num-bered almost double that. At 0247 hours on 17 January 1991, General Schwarzkopf received word that the first targets of Desert Storm � two Iraqi early-warning radar installations on the Saudi Arabian border � had been taken out. A dozen Apache helicopters of the 101st Airborne streaked in only ten metres above the desert floor and hit them from five kilo�metres away with deadly laser-guided Hellfire missiles. The Apache flight had been followed up by eight F-15 fighters tasked to skewer the nearest Iraqi air-defence command centre, opening up a brace of blind corridors through which thousands of Coalition jets would swarm to hit 240 strategic targets all over Iraq. While the Allied airstrikes continued, the SAS was transferring on C130 transport planes from its HQ in the United Arab Emirates and forming up at its FOB (forward operating base) at al-Jauf in Saudi Arabia, a day's drive south of the Iraqi frontier. Equipped with Land Rover 110s fitted with Browning machine-guns, GPMGs (gen�eral-purpose machine-guns) and Milan missiles, A and D Squadrons were preparing to launch their deep-penetra�tion raids, but wondering if there was really any place for them in the midst of this hi-tech circus. The air war already seemed to be going the way Schwarzkopf had pre�dicted,' Peter Ratcliffe wrote. 'Who needed. Special Forces?" On 18 January the situation changed dramatically for the SAS. At 0300 hours that morning Iraq fired seven Scud missiles at Israel, to be followed later by another three. Israeli casualties were, luckily, slight, but Israeli Premier Yitshak Shamir came up fighting, and demanded the right to retaliate with a hundred aircraft and a com-mando attack, flying across Saudi Arabian airspace. Schwarzkopf's nightmare scenario was about to unfold right before his eyes. If the Israelis were to hit Iraq, the Coalition the Americans had worked so hard to build would be badly strained, or even shattered. `The Bear' had discounted the antiquated Scud as a tac�tical weapon, but had to concede that as a political threat it was ideal. The Coalition must be protected at any price, and the price was a diversion from its 'real' job of thirty per cent of Allied air power to execute what became known as the 'Great Scud Hunt'. Schwarzkopf was right in believing that the Scud was outdated. Based loosely on the German V2 of WW2 notoriety, these ballistic missiles had been produced in Russia in the 1950s and had been imported by the Iraqis in the 1970s and 1980s during the Iran�Iraq war. Flying about 30 kilometres above the earth, at a speed of 5,000 kilometres an hour, the Scud did not possess sufficient range for the Iraqis to hit Tehran, while Baghdad was vul-nerable to attack by Iranian missiles because it stood nearer the border. Consequently the Iraqis cannibalized their existing Scuds, extending their length and fuel capacity, but reducing the power of the warheads. The ploy was successful, and in 1988 Scud attacks on Tehran accounted for some eight thousand casualties. Saddam Hussein was now intending to bring Israel into the war by launching similar attacks on Tel Aviv. Though President Bush assured Shamir that evening that all known fixed Scud bases had been blitzed by Coalition sorties, most of the Israel-bound Scuds had been fired from mobile TELs (transporter-erector launchers) in western Iraq. Allied fighters could make mincemeat of these vehicles � if they could be located, and locating them was the problem. It was often beyond the scope of even the most sophisticated surveillance equipment when the TELs were hidden in bunkers, or even under a convenient motorway bridge. Though Bush eventually persuaded Shamir to desist, at least temporar-ily, it was clear that the mobile launchers had to be found. Here at last was a job that the Mk 1 human eyeball could do better than any machine � a job custom-built for the SAS, and one that the astute de la Billiere had considered a possibility from the beginning. On 20 January, 128 men of A and D Squadrons, already crossing the Iraqi border in search of opportunity targets, received official sanction from Schwarzkopf to hunt the Scuds. Only half of B Squadron had been deployed at al-Jauf, the others having been left in the United Arab Emirates on security detail, and that half � including McNab, Ryan and Phillips � was divided into three teams, Bravo One Zero, Bravo Two Zero and Bravo One Niner, which would be flown in by Chinook to three specified MSRs (Main Supply Routes) deep behind enemy lines. Bravo Two Zero consisted of eight men. The patrol com-mander, 'McNab', was a Londoner, the son of a Greek nightclub owner and his English mistress, who had been brought up by foster parents and had decided to join the army to escape a life of petty theft and delinquency Now a sergeant, with eight or nine years' service in the SAS, his main combat experience had been in Northern Ireland with the Royal Green Jackets � his parent unit �where he had shot and wounded one terrorist and killed another. Married, with one child from a previous mar-riage, McNab was a fast-talking, articulate Jack-the-lad who considered that every professional soldier deserved at least one proper war, and this was his. His second-in�command, Sergeant Vince Phillips, was older than the rest of the team � at thirty-six he had only a couple more years to serve. Phillips was the odd-man-out in Bravo Two Zero because, unlike the others, he belonged to A Squadron and had been posted in to fill a gap at the last moment. 'Ryan', a corporal, was a Geordie from the Tyneside region, a highly intelligent and determined man who had served in 23 SAS (V) before joining 22 SAS. Married, with one child, Ryan was the most experienced patrol medic in the team. 'anger' � a prodigious smoker and drinker � was a lance-corporal who had served in the Parachute Regiment prior to the SAS, as had his com�rade, Trooper Steven 'Legs' Lane, a relative newcomer to the Regiment, who was married with two children and who held the vital job of patrol signaller. Robert 'Bob' Consiglio was a small but powerful man of Anglo-Italian descent who had resigned from the Royal Marines to take SAS selection and had passed first time. The remaining two members of Bravo Two Zero were both Antipodeans. 'Stan' � the only university graduate in the patrol � had served in the Rhodesian army, but had emi-grated to Australia, where he had trained as a dentist. He had given it all up to move to Britain and join the SAS. Finally there was Mike Coburn, 'Mark', a New Zealander who had originally served in the Australian SAS. All eight men were highly trained professional sol�diers, the best of the best Special Forces unit in the world. On the evening of 22 January 1991, Bravo Two Zero was flown to a point about 187 miles north of the border, within striking distance of the most northerly of the three MSRs. Touching down at around 2000 hours that night, they lay in the cold desert in all-round defence until the Chinook had disappeared, then picked up their massive burdens � 95 kilos, about 209 pounds of equipment each � and began to lug it towards an LUP (lying-up point) they had chosen somewhere near a kink in the road. To find that LUP � the first identifiable point in the Bravo Two Zero story � was my own objective when I arrived in Anbar, a little more than ten years on. CHAPTER four FROM � STANFORD'S IN THE Haymarket, I had obtained a 1:500,000 air chart of Iraq. It was similar to the
ones Bravo Two Zero had been issued with, but of a smaller scale � theirs was the 1:250,000 scale version, which was not available to the public. Luckily, though, in The One That Got Away Ryan had reproduced a section of his own map with Bravo Two Zero's routes marked on it, and McNab had supplied a sketch-map drawn to scale at the end of his book. By painstaking protractor work I had been able to transfer the routes to my own larger-scale map with some accuracy. The patrol's lying-up point �their 'first base' � had been in sight of a main road, so assuming McNab and Ryan had put it in the right place, it would be relatively easy to find by simply driving out along that road a measured number of kilometres from the nearest town, al-Haqlaniya. Just before we reached al-Haqlaniya, Ali, in the lead vehicle, turned off sharply down a road to the right. Wondering what on earth he was doing, I had my driver overtake and I flagged him down. 'Where are you going?' I demanded. He announced majestically that there were some Bedouin living in this direction whom he thought might know something about what happened in the Gulf War. A red light started blinking in my head; I knew this tendency had to be nipped in the bud. If the minders intended to guide me and show me where I had to go, then the story would immediately lose its credibility. I had no intention whatsoever of playing pawn to Iraqi propaganda � I had to be certain that anything I discovered was absolutely independent. I stopped the convoy and called everyone over to me. Now listen,' I told them in Arabic. 'I have come here to do a job, and I know what I'm doing. I know where I am going and to whom I want to talk. I speak Arabic and I am familiar with deserts, and if there are places to be found and witnesses to be talked to, I will find them myself, or I won't find them at all. I am sure you know your jobs, but on no account must you interfere with mine. We must do it my way, and go where I want to go, even if I am wrong. As I understand it, you are here only to make sure I don't enter a restricted area or film forbid�den items, not to tell me where I should go. I don't want to be told to go here and talk to someone there, and unless that is understood, we can go back to Baghdad right now.' I had said it rather too pugnaciously, and for a moment there was a strained silence. Then Ali grinned nervously and said he had worked with news film-crews before and knew what was required. He had only been trying to help. Abu Omar sneered and turned away, but neither of the minders ever tried to interfere directly again. We turned back to our original route and, bypassing al- Haqlaniya, moved south of west along the road that led to the pumping-stations H1, H2 and H3, and eventually to Jordan, running parallel with the great watercourse known as the Wadi. Hawran. To our north was a line of electricity pylons which angled sharply away across stony, flat desert after a few kilometres. I was following our progress on my Magellan � a hand-held global pos-itioning system unit (GPS) the size of a mobile telephone, which gave my latitude and longitude within a few metres. It was a slightly more sophisticated version of the GPS unit the Bravo Two Zero patrol had carried with them on the operation itself. Now, I experienced a sudden burst of excitement. This was definitely it, I thought, the Main Supply Route that had been Bravo Two Zero's objective on the night of 22 January 1991. As we sped along, I found myself wondering what McNab's patrol had really been doing here in the first place. In his book, McNab relates that the Officer Commanding B Squadron specifically tasked his patrol with locating and cutting communications landlines, and locating and destroying Scuds. The duration of the oper-ation was to be fourteen days, and the patrol was to range 250 kilometres along this very road, seeking out and bumping opportunity targets � an active and aggressive role. But though McNab devotes several pages to describ-ing how the patrol intended to knock out the Scuds, Ryan's description of the OC's briefing is entirely differ�ent. He quotes the same officer as telling the patrol that their job was to gather intelligence � to find a lying-up point, set up an observation post on the road and report back to the forward operating base (FOB) on enemy traf�fic movement, especially Scuds. In Ryan's account the task is essentially passive. He maintains that the patrol would remain hidden, manning the OP for ten days, after which it would be relocated by air. He mentions nothing about `destroying Scuds', or patrolling 250 kilometres along the MSR, but does state that a subsidiary task was to blow up any fibre-optic cables the patrol might happen to find while going about their principal task. Though McNab's version is the more dashing and romantic, the road-watch OP is classic SAS procedure, with a history going back to the Long Range Desert Group. In 1942 LRDG patrols set up OPs along the Via Balbia � the main German supply route along the coast of North Africa � to watch and report enemy movements in order to verify the decrypts British Intelligence had obtained through crack�ing the Enigma code. They had succeeded brilliantly, hiding their vehicles behind dunes or in wadis, rotating two men out each night to man the OP, which was often little more than a rock or a clump of grass. Later, throughout the Cold War, it was the main task of 21 and 23 SAS, the territorial units, to dig and operate similar OPs in Europe � a fact that Ryan knew well, having orig�inally served in 23 SAS. Of the three road-watch patrols sent out from B Squadron, two elected to go on foot. Why send foot patrols to knock out highly mobile and heavily protected Scud launchers, I wondered? A mobile patrol could do the job far more efficiently with its Milan missiles, and as Schwarzkopf had rightly said, a Stealth fighter could do it even better. Even the A and D Squadron patrols that had gone out on 20 January had been directed to locate rather than destroy Scuds, trans-mitting their locations to the Air Arm so that they could be taken out with ease. Expecting a foot patrol to destroy Scud erector launchers with the whole of the desert to hide in seemed to defy military logic, while going in on foot if you intended to lie hidden in one place for ten days and be relocated by aircraft at least made some kind of sense. Ryan states clearly that if the patrol sighted a Scud convoy on the road, their task was not to attack it, but to relay the information back to base by both satcom and patrol radio, upon receipt of which an aircraft would be vectored in to take the missile out.6 That the patrol planned to put in a hide is also indicated by the tremen�dous weights they were hefting, which Ryan puts even heavier than McNab, at 120 kilos per man. Although McNab emphasizes the large amount of ordnance they had with them � plastic explosive, Claymore and Elsie anti-personnel mines, timers, detonators, primers and det�onating cord � the patrol was also carrying hundreds of fibre sandbags, camouflage nets and full-sized shovels, the function of which can only have been to put in an OP. Though Ryan states that they intended to dig into the bank of a wadi, McNab maintains that the shovels were for digging up fibre-optic cables. The road climbed a low escarpment, passed buildings and plantations and descended through a series of bends into a valley, with a fifteen-foot ridge of crumbling basalt to our right and, to our left, the bronze-green folds, fur�rows and ripples of the desert. I stopped the car and looked around. According to my best assessment from the map and the Magellan, we were now within a few hundred metres of Bravo Two Zero's LUP. I jumped out and looked around. To the south, the rocky table-land fell away suddenly about 250 metres from the road into a sys�tem of deep-sided wadis, and as I climbed down to investigate the various re-entrants I wondered if the LUP would be recognizable: both Ryan and McNab had described a sort of cave or overhang, divided in the mid�dle by a detached, wedge-shaped rock. One re-entrant I followed ended in a narrow cleft wide enough only to hold a single man; this could not be the place in which eight SAS men had holed up. A second branch-wadi terminated in a bowl-shaped depression, with signs of erosion and tiny caves cut into the rock walls. I looked at McNab's and Ryan's descriptions again � Ryan's in particular was very specific, recording that the overhang went back well under the wadi wall, and that the detached rock stood about seven feet high. I was cer�tain this couldn't be it � the caves were no more than eroded apertures, too small to have hidden even a dog. I was beginning to think that either I had made an error in my map-reading or there had been no LUP here at all when I stumbled on a cul-de-sac at the end of a third branch-wadi. I stared at it,
amazed at what I had found. The space was perhaps ten metres wide and filled with vegetation and stones. On the eastern side was a deep rock overhang, like a shelter, enclosing a pocket of shade. There was a smaller overhang to the right, divided from the larger one by a vast, detached boulder, almost pyramid-shaped, behind which a group of men huddling together might have been completely hidden. I went over the descriptions yet again and knew there could be no possible doubt. I was standing on one of the sacred sites of late-twentieth-century Special Operations. I had found Bravo Two Zero's LUP. As cover from view, the wadi-end was perfect, but as a defensive position, as McNab himself says, it left much to be desired. I searched the place thoroughly, thrilled by the knowledge that I was almost certainly the first Westerner to visit this spot since Bravo Two Zero had holed up here in January 1991. This had been the place where the patrol had been compromised and where Vince Phillips had spent his last peaceful night. My search revealed nothing but the rim of a canvas bucket, tucked between some stones, but I pulled at it gingerly, knowing there could still be booby traps here, even ten years later. Luckily, there was no flash-bang, and when I examined it I couldn't be certain whether it was British army issue or some Bedouin thing. Letting it go, I scrambled out of the wadi on the northern side, trying to match my view against what McNab and Ryan might have seen as the day dawned on the morning of 23 January 1991, ten years before. Although McNab's MSR could not be seen from here because of the dead ground, I knew it was there, no more than a stone's throw away, because our convoy of four orange and white GMCs was parked up there, on my side of the granite ridge that cut across the desert to the north. Due east lay a rambling clutch of what appeared to be farm-buildings and a water-tower among sparse bushes and shrubs, standing on a flat-topped hill. Curiously, McNab does mention seeing a house with trees and a water-tower, but due south of this position rather than east, where I could see none. Even more curiously, he cites an almost identical settlement � trees, water-tower, a building � as having stood due east of the point where the patrol had been dropped by helicopter, which, according to him, lay twenty kilometres south of here. Ryan does not report having seen the farm at all, but recalls having heard dogs barking within 500 metres of the helicopter drop-off point, which he says was only two kilometres south of the place I was standing. If I had come here expecting to get a clear picture of what had really happened, I was disappointed. The only thing I could be sure of was that I had found the LUP. CHAPTER five THE MORE I LOOKED AT THE farm-house, the nearer it appeared. I could have sworn it was less than a kilo�metre away. Of course, it might not have been there at all ten years ago, but even so, it was still possible that some�one there might at least be able to give me hearsay information, or even put me in touch with a witness. I decided to go up to the house, pacing out my way with the Magellan as I did so. The ground was flattish and stony, interspersed with patches of baked clay, but there was another plunging wadi between me and the house which had signs of cultivation in its bed. As I slithered down the slope into it, dogs began to bark. I came up into a dusty .driveway set among withered stone-pine, euca�lyptus and mesquite trees that were obviously having a hard time coping with moisture loss. The house was exactly 600 hundred metres from the lying-up point, and close up it was huge and spartan, with concrete pillars supporting a wide verandah that ran the whole length of its fa�e. In the shade of the verandah stood a huge earthenware pot full of water, and on the wall was what looked like the stuffed head of a wolf. There were other outbuildings hidden behind it that I could not see prop�erly, but the water-storage tank I had noticed from the wadi was obviously an antique � rusted to pieces and full of holes. A veiled woman in loose brown robes was work�ing around the corner of the verandah, and when I called out to her, As-salaam alaykum � Peace be on you,' she returned my greeting and invited me to come into the shade and sit down. Soon children of every age, dressed in dishdashas and shamaghs, were buzzing around me like flies. Carpets were rolled out on the verandah and cushions brought, and soon I was being offered cool water from the earthenware pot and, very shortly, glasses of sweet tea. The reception was familiar to me and although I was a complete stranger here I felt at home. I knew instinctively that these people were Bedouin � there were a thousand tell-tale signs: their graciousness, the way they dressed and moved, their spontaneous welcome to a guest. Bedouin customs are universal all over the Middle East and North Africa, and one of the most sacred is hospi�tality. Their code holds that anyone is welcome in a Bedouin home for three days, and in that time the host is duty-bound to give him the best of what he has to eat and drink, and to protect him from harm, even against his own family. This code holds even if the guest is an enemy with whom the family has a blood feud, and in that case, even when the guest has left, the host and his family can�not pursue him until the bread and salt he has eaten in the house is reckoned to have passed out of his system. One of the worst insults that can be lodged against a Bedouin is that he 'did not know a guest', and since the Bedouin live by the cult of reputation rather than possessions, fam�ilies and individuals actually compete with one another to gain renown for open-handedness. Eventually a rugged-looking young man with curly hair and a blue stubble appeared and shook hands. He looked about twenty years old, and wore a dirty white dishdasha with no headcloth. We exchanged greetings and he sat down next to me self-consciously. No Bedouin will ask directly what your business is, but as the polite small talk petered out I explained that I was British, and had come to enquire about a gun-battle that I thought had taken place near here ten years ago. The youth grinned at me, showing crooked teeth. 'There was such a battle,' he said at once. 'I was only a boy then, but my family was living here at the time.' A pulse of hope shot through me. If this boy's family had been here in 1991, there was a good chance they knew all about Bravo Two Zero. 'Can you tell me what happened?' I asked. He shook his head. 'There were some foreign comman�dos hiding in the wadi,' he said. 'And my uncle saw them.' `Your uncle? I understood it was a shepherd-boy who saw them.' `All I know is that there was shooting � I only heard about it from my Uncle Abbas. He isn't here today but he will be back tomorrow. He can tell you all you want to know' It was tantalizing, but for the moment I had to be content with that. AFTER DARK, WHILE THE MINDERS, film-crew and drivers put their tents up on a patch of flat ground near the road, I made my way to the LUP and rolled out my sleeping-bag and poncho, intending to spend the night there. Perhaps no one, not even a shepherd, had slept here since 24 January 1991, when this place had last been home to Bravo Two Zero. As I lay in pitch darkness, on the same patch of rock Vince Phillips or one of the oth-ers must have lain on, I tried to imagine them all around me, and the subtle interplay of energies that characterizes any human group. Although SAS men are selected partly for their ability to get on with others in closed environ-ments, given their highly competitive nature, personality clashes are inevitable. McNab's description in his autobi-ography of how satisfied he was to see others failing on selection, since it meant he was doing well, is probably typical: 'There are more schemers in the SAS than an outsider might think,' Peter Ratcliffe has written. 'Guys just hoping you'll fall, and not at all unwilling to give you that little shove if they can get away with it!' Vince was an outsider who had been posted in from A Squadron to take the second-in-command's slot that would otherwise have gone to Ryan, as the next senior in rank after McNab. Although SAS men feel great loyalty to the Regiment, and a sense of brotherhood that is born of a common mystique and shared hardship, in practice it is the squadron to which they feel their deepest loyalty � a loyalty that has been described by some as taking the place of religion. There is a certain xenophobia against While McNab was proud to have served in the Royal Green Jackets, Ryan had no real parent unit at all. As an entrant straight from the TA, he was � to a greater extent than McNab even � one hundred per cent proof SAS, but to his mates in B Squadron he would probably always remain 'the weekend soldier'. That Ryan felt the need to live this down is s
uggested by the description of the way he asserts himself in his book, noting that he emerged as the natural 2i/c because he was 'more positive' than Vince on the ground, and that he took up the position of lead scout simply because he 'didn't trust anyone else to go first.8 As well as his critical attitude to Phillips, he also points a derogatory finger at his patrol commander, McNab, hinting that on first arrival he was 'semi-stunned' by the enormity of the task, and later, that he was so des�perate to prove himself that he devised a madcap plan to bump an anti-aircraft position that had no relation to. their task, and from which Ryan had to gently dissuade him. McNab does not mention the plan, nor does Ryan, in McNab's book, seem to have played the dominating role in decision-making he appears to do in his own. In fact, McNab refers to Vince Phillips as a major player far more than he refers to Ryan. There is an air of knowing best about Ryan's attitude, a sense of the perfectionist loner, 'the voice of reason', as McNab himself puts it. Ryan probably looked down on McNab � an ex-boy sol�dier � as someone who had been institutionalized by the army, had missed out on the realities of life, and was too `gobby' � a flaw that had, in fact, very nearly cost him the SAS selection � 'words came out of him so fast,' Ryan said, 'that you never quite knew where you were.' 9 As I lay there in the LUP, staring at the stars, I also thought about the tremendous loads the patrol had brought in with them, which McNab says they had car-ried twenty kilometres to this LUP. Each man had a Bergen rucksack � the standard SAS issue, with a capac�ity of about a hundred litres, packed with at least twenty-five kilos of sandbags and OP equipment per man, rations for ten days, spare batteries for the radio, demolition gear, mines, jerrycans of water, and intra�venous drips and fluids for emergencies. The most vital piece of kit was the PRC 319, a state-of-the-art patrol radio with a burst capacity, which meant that encrypted messages could be sent in a fraction of a second and thus reduce the risk of being DF'd (direction found) by enemy tracking-stations. The set was an improvement on the old ones only from the point of view of security � the system of using vocabularies and coding the messages on a one-time pad remained as time-consuming as always. The 319 worked on a duplex antenna, a coil of wire that was nor�mally hidden in trees, but would also work when laid on rocks, the length of which had to be adjusted according to the frequency. Spare antennae were carried so that if the patrol had to move quickly the set could be detached and the antenna in use dumped. The patrol also had with it a field telephone system designed for use between two OPs, and four TACBEs, miniature radio beacons that, when primed, could send a signal to AWACS � the air�borne warning and control systems aircraft that coordinated the communications networks and were recognizable by their mushroom-shaped antennae. TACBE was supposed to be able to elicit a response from AWACS within fifteen seconds, and could also be used for contacting aircraft or for ground-to-ground contact at close quarters. In addition to their Bergens, the patrol had belt-kit containing emergency rations, cooking gear and ammunition, and each man had two sandbags filled with extra rations and the crucial NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical warfare) suits comprising two hermetically sealed sets of charcoal-lined smocks and pants, and a gas-mask, overboots and gloves. Mobile toilets were not forgotten � in the form of a 'piss can' into which the patrol would urinate, and plastic bags into which they would defecate, carrying all their waste products with them until they could be disposed of safely. Four of the team had M16 Armalite rifles with underslung 40mm grenade-launchers known as M203s, and the others car�ried Minimis: Belgian-made light machine-guns firing 5.56mm ammunition from both belt and magazine. All had one-shot disposable LAW 66mm rocket-launchers capable of taking out armoured vehicles, L2 High Explosive grenades and white phosphorus grenades. Vince Phillips had a Browning 9mm pistol. Most of the patrol had a poncho or space-blanket, but none had a sleeping-bag � a potentially fatal omission in the icy con-ditions they encountered. Though McNab states that a sleeping-bag was a luxury item, such macho aplomb runs counter to everything taught in the Regiment, where no detail of personal morale is neglected. A man who is freezing to death and unable to sleep because of the cold is hardly likely to be able to carry out his task, no matter how many millions of dollars-worth of technology is at his disposal. In the Iraqi desert in winter, a sleeping-bag was definitely not a luxury, but a relatively cheap and light piece of equipment that could have saved lives. The reason Bravo Two Zero did not carry them was not because they were considered luxuries, but because they had not learned the lessons of T. E. Lawrence: they believed that the desert was a hot place, and thought they would simply not need them. With such a vast amount of equipment to carry about, of course, Bravo Two Zero were at a tremendous disad-vantage as a foot patrol. According to ex-RSM Peter Ratcliffe, they had forgotten the Regiment's tradition of travelling fast and light: 'I admit to being the traditional kind of practical soldier who believes you don't need much equipment to operate efficiently,' he wrote, `and that you should go in as light as possible. But they were taking twenty or thirty bulging sandbags in addition to the rest of their gear.' The day before the operation, Ratcliffe had attempted in vain to try to get McNab to reduce the amount of kit. 'I knew to a certainty they were taking too much,' he wrote. `I gave them a dozen paces maximum � yet McNab expected them to move freely, as circumstances demanded. An SAS unit, to misquote Mohammed Ali, should be capable of floating like a butterfly and stinging like a swarm of killer bees. The guys in "McNab's" patrol were carrying far too much equipment and far too much weight to be able to operate effectively.'" I awoke in the night to find myself being attacked, not by a swarm of killer bees but of midges, and moved my sleeping-bag up to the channel above the wadi. For a while I lay awake, thinking over what I had read in McNab's and Ryan's books about their first day in this LUP, and it seemed to me that things had gone downhill fast from the start. On arriving here not long before first light on 23 January, the patrol had immediately gone to ground, leaving two men on stag, changing every two hours. The weather was much colder than the spring day in England they had anticipated, and by now they must have realized that lying hidden for hours on OP in these temperatures was going to be no joke. Second, and more serious from the point of view of their task, they now knew it would be impossible to put in their observation post because the ground was rock-hard rather than sandy. They had practised digging the OP in the Empty Quarter of southern Arabia � the world's largest sand desert � and had mistakenly expected the texture of the desert to be, similar here. This meant that they had expended energy and resources in lugging along material for building the OP which had turned out to be totally wasted. When first light came, they checked down the wadi to make sure they had left no tracks, and set up two Claymore anti-personnel mines at fifty metres � basically, shaped charges of PE with ball-bearings embedded in them. The mines were operated by clackers on the end of wires and could be used to spray a path or route if any�one tried to approach them. McNab did a recce, saw the house nearby and, realizing they were too close to habi- tation for comfort, wrote a sitrep (situation report) which Legs, the 'Sealey', or signaller, encrypted and typed into the 319, then sent off. There was no acknowledgement. Again and again they tried, changing the shape and length of the antenna and recalibrating frequencies, but with no result. By the end of the day, the patrol accepted that they had lost comms. This was the most perilous blow they had received so far, because without radio con�tact they were cut off from their base 320 kilometres (200 miles) away. McNab remained cool, however, because they had a prearranged lost comms procedure, by which, if nothing was heard from them, the helicopter would return to the original drop-off point in exactly forty-eight hours. There was worse news to come that night, however, when McNab discovered a nest of two S60 anti-aircraft guns on the ridge north of the road, which he says were attended by Iraqi troops in platoon strength. The follow�ing day, he says, he spotted yet another pair of S60s, only three hundred metres from the LUP, and for the first time he started to feel jittery. There was still n
o go on the 319, so the patrol prepared themselves to move back to the heli rendezvous that night. Meanwhile, though, Ryan says, McNab made plans to attack the AA position (he does not make clear which one), intending to slam it with everything they had, then make a run for it back to the helicopter RV. Ryan was incensed, pointing out that whatever installation the AA guns were guarding, it had to be protected by large num�bers of troops, and anyway, to knock out AA guns was not part of their remit: 'Our operation's here in the OP,' Ryan told him. 'If we can't stay here we'd better go back.12 By 1400 hours McNab had dropped the idea of attacking the guns and decided they would simply move back to the RV and wait for the hell to come in. It was as they were preparing to move out, both claim, that the patrol was compromised. Although McNab and Ryan describe the compromise differently, both agree that it was a shepherd-boy who spotted them. McNab writes that at about 1600 hours the patrol heard goat-bells approaching the LUP from the west � the direction of the house. Shortly afterwards, a small boy appeared at the lip of the wadi and saw them sitting there. Astonished, McNab implies he immediately made off towards the AA emplacement the patrol had clocked earlier. McNab notes that both Vince and Mark attempted to run after the boy, but had given up the idea for fear of being noticed by the AA gunners. Accepting that Bravo Two Zero had been compromised, McNab then gave the order to pull out. According to Ryan, the shepherd-boy would not have noticed them except for the fact that, overcome with the temptation to see what was happening, Vince Phillips moved, craning his head to see if he could spot him. At the time, though, Ryan says, no one was sure if the boy had really seen them at all � it was only later that Vince came clean about it. In Ryan's version, there is no mad rush towards the AA guns, and no desperate attempt by Vince and Mark to intercept the youth. Ryan says that there was no cry of alarm and that it was pretty obvious that the boy had run off (italics mine), which is merely an assumption, not an observed fact, while McNab recounts that he actually made eye contact with the boy and saw the astonishment in his eyes, and that the youth suddenly went running off. McNab also writes that he 'followed the boy with his eyes' as he ran away, yet the LUP is five metres deep and steep-sided, and while you could see someone standing right on the lip, it would be impossible for men lying prone to have seen the boy running off. Not only does McNab's account seem unlikely judging by the ground, but the two accounts are obviously incompatible. I looked forward keenly to returning to the farm the fol�lowing day, hoping that some fresh light would be shed on the matter by the mysterious 'Uncle Abbas'. CHAPTER six ABBAS BIN FADHIL WAS THE head of the extended family living in the settlement on the hill � a family that must have numbered at least thirty men, women and chil-dren. He was a slim, upright man with an open face and a wild beard, who walked with a pronounced limp. His voice was raucous and he tended to shout, as Bedouin will do, but he exuded warmth and hospitality. As I shook hands with him and his relatives and seated myself on a cushion in the vast mudhif or reception room, I won�dered what the day would bring. Abbas ordered tea for everyone, and while it was being served I gazed around me. There were no electric lights in this place, I noted, and neither did there appear to be any running water. The house consisted of little more than this mudhif, carpeted and lined with cushions � obviously no one but guests actually slept there. While we were drinking the tea, Abbas introduced me to two more Bedouin: a tall, spindly-looking man with a Mexican-style moustache, a little younger than Abbas himself, and a handsome youth of about eighteen or twenty The tall man was Abbas's younger brother, Hayil, and the youth their nephew, Adil. As we chatted, Abbas told me that they belonged to a Bedouin tribe called the Buhayat, who had long had a farm in the area. Though he had been brought up in a black tent in the desert and had ridden camels as a boy, his family were now settled here. They raised livestock � mainly sheep � and planted wheat in the wadis after the rains, but had long ago given up their camels in favour of motor vehicles. Abbas said that the mudhif we were sitting in was new, but it stood on the site of a more primitive structure which had been hit by Allied bombers back in 1991. `Thank God no one was killed,' he said. 'But they did hit some Bedouin tents on other raids and killed both people and sheep. Now what was the point of that?' Despite the fact that I was British, he appeared � like the people in Baghdad � to nurse no grievance against me personally. 'I can tell you everything about the foreign soldiers who were here,' he said. 'At the time we thought they were Americans, but if you say they were British, all right. First of all, it wasn't a herdsboy who saw them in the wadi, it was me. I was the one who saw them first.' I squinted at Abbas, wondering whether he might have been mistaken for a boy ten years before. Black-bearded and weathered-looking, I concluded that he was a man who had probably looked forty all his adult life. Excited, I watched him, waiting for more, but he suddenly, urged me up and called me outside. "There's something I must show you,' he said. Behind the house was a square of one-roomed stone cottages, which were evidently the real living quarters of the house, and a large open-sided barn. There were three vehicles in the barn: a battered truck and two yellow bull-dozers. Abbas led me to the larger of the bulldozers. 'I bought this new back in the 1980s,' he said. 'Imported direct from Japan. In 1991 there was a very cold winter. The wind was terrible. This house is on a hill, as you can see, so one day � it was 24 January; I know the date because a lot happened on that day � I decided to park it down in the wadi, out of the wind. I was afraid the fuel would freeze up. I drove it down there � it only takes a few minutes from the house � and right up to the end of the wadi, where there is a sheltered place. When I got there I saw two armed men peering at me over the rocks, not more than ten metres away, one on the side of the wadi in front of me and one below to my left. They were wearing camouflage jackets and shamaghs over their faces, and I had no idea who they were. They could have been Iraqi commandos, or special troops of the Intelligence Service, or enemy fliers who had crashed. They could have been sheep-rustlers. Whoever they were, I decided to pretend I hadn't seen them. I looked at the ground, avoided eye contact, and reversed the bulldozer out of the wadi-end. Then I just turned it round and drove straight back to the house.' I listened to Abbas, fascinated. Both McNab and Ryan had described a man approaching them on a bulldozer, but I hadn't mentioned it eitherto Abbas or to the youth last night. It had come entirely out of the blue. Now it appeared I had not only found the driver they had written about, but the bulldozer too. McNab recalls that the patrol had heard the sound of a tracked vehicle and, assuming it was an armoured per-sonnel carrier alerted by the herdsboy, had cocked their 66mm rocket-launchers, ready to take it out. When it had come into view and McNab saw that it was just 'an idiot pottering about with a digger' he had relaxed, thinking �rightly, according to Abbas � that it was there quite inno�cently. McNab had been wrong, though, in assuming that `the idiot' hadn't seen them in fact, Abbas's quick think�ing in averting his gaze had probably saved his life. Ryan writes that the patrol knew the man had spotted them, concluding that since the wadi was a cul-de-sac he could only have been coming to find out who was there. This in turn suggested that the shepherd-boy had warned him When I asked Abbas about this, he laughed and pointed at Adil, his nephew 'There's your shepherd-boy,' he said. 'Ask him.' As I turned to him in surprise, Adil explained that he had been out herding sheep (not goats, as McNab and Ryan said) the same afternoon. 'I was about ten years old then,' he said. 'I took the sheep up to the wadi edge, but I didn't go down into it It is true that I looked down into the wadi, but I certainly didn't see any foreign soldiers there. I know now they were there, of course, but I didn't see them at the time, and didn't know anything about it until my uncle told me later.' I was bowled over by Adil's revelation. Here, against all the odds, was the very boy who would remain frozen for all time in McNab's and Ryan's books as the shepherd who had spotted them and ultimately brought about their downfall. And yet, according to the shepherd-boy's own testimony, he had not seen them at all. Couldn't it have been someone el
se, I insisted? Surely Adil wasn't the only boy herding sheep that day? `If someone else had seen them, they would have come straight to us,' Abbas said, 'as our house is so near to the wadi. One way or another we would have heard about it, at the time, or since. Everyone who lives in the desert here is related to us � this is the tribal area of the Buhayat. There aren't any strangers around and no one herds sheep here except our family. All I can say is if there was another boy who saw the commandos, then he certainly didn't tell anyone.' It made sense: this was a remote desert region, not a busy city street full of nameless faces. I knew from exper�ience how efficient and precise the Bedouin grapevine could be � if another herdsboy had seen Bravo Two Zero, Abbas and his family would certainly have known. I remembered McNab had written that the boy might have gone running off to tell the anti-aircraft gunners, and I asked Abbas if there had been any S60s in the area at the time. He pointed to the high ridge running along the road about four hundred metres away. 'There was an anti-aircraft post up there,' he said. 'But with only a few soldiers. We had nothing to do with them at all.' The nearest military base was about fifteen kilometres away across the plateau. The soldiers up there had no vehicles � they were dropped off and picked up by vehicles from the base, and they wouldn't have left their post anyway. Why would Adil go to the anti-aircraft guns � even assuming he had seen the commandos in the wadi, which he hadn't � instead of coming to his family? He was only a small boy. It doesn't make sense. I asked Abbas to take me in the bulldozer to reconstruct the short journey of that day ten years ago, and as we trundled up the narrow, steep-sided wadi to the LUP, I experienced a deep thrill. Here I was, seeing not what McNab and Ryan had seen as they peered through the sights of their 66s and Minimi light machine-guns that day, but, incredibly, what the 'idiot in the digger' had seen, sitting on the same bulldozer with the man himself. Both McNab and Ryan had written that the bulldozer had stopped 150 metres from their position, but on the ground I could see this was clearly a mistake, because the LUP was tucked behind a bend in the wadi. Unless the patrol had left their LUP, then they could not have seen the vehicle at such a distance, and indeed, both texts suggest they saw the bulldozer only when it came round a corner. Abbas showed me where he had stopped �almost close enough to the LUP to spit � and pointed out where the two men had been. As we drove back to the house, bumping over the stones, I wondered if Abbas and Adil were telling the truth. I knew that Bedouin do not lie, but under enough pressure from the government, they might have had no choice. Yet no one in the government had known I was coming here to this particular spot, and no one had sug-gested it. If I had followed Ali's advice, we would have ended up somewhere completely different � even Uday at the Ministry of Information had told me it was highly unlikely I would find eyewitnesses. Any campaign of dis-information would have involved deliberately putting me off-guard with a Machiavellian system of feints and double-bluffs, insisting I would find no witnesses, but with success dependent on the notion that I would find them anyway. And for Abbas, from his Bedouin's point of view, what would be the point of lying? Why, in a culture where the cult of reputation rules supreme, should Abbas deny that his nephew had spotted the patrol if it were the truth, and why should Adil connive in that lie? On the other hand, whether Adil had seen the patrol or not was crucial to my purpose � one I had not even revealed to the Bedouin. If the boy had not spotted anyone, as he claimed, then Vince Phillips could not have compromised the patrol as Ryan and the classified report suggest.