by Damien Lewis
He’d taken over leading the Troop and raced ahead on his skidoo. Barely minutes later he’d gone flying over a ravine. His machine had gone airborne with the trailer behind it, the rider leaving the saddle and landing face first. Grey and the others pulled to a halt at the lip of the ravine. Below them was a cartoon-like scene of a human imprint where the Troop commander had disappeared into a thick snowdrift.
No one knew quite what to say. Everyone was trying not to laugh. As they pulled him out of the snow, someone got their camera out to take a souvenir photo. ‘Anyone takes a fucking photo I’ll flatten the fucker,’ he’d exploded, spitting out a mouthful of snow as he did so. Luckily, the only damage to the Skidoo was a broken throttle – and he’d insisted on continuing with the exercise, using a pair of pliers to operate the throttle cable.
That experience of driving through the Arctic light had taught Grey a crucial lesson: it was dead easy to miss a massive drop in such conditions, even when it was right in front of your bloody nose. Back then the Troop commander had been fortunate enough to land in soft snow. There would be no doing that here in Iraq.
With the darkness deepening, the Squadron pulled to a halt in some thick cover. If they tried to push any further, there was bound to be a serious accident or worse. It was the early hours of the morning, and this would be their LUP for the remainder of the night. Sentries were posted, while the rest of the blokes got their heads down for some much needed kip.
Grey shook himself awake for stand-to at 0500 hours. He’d got a solid four hours’ sleep in the cool of the night, which was about as good as it got on such operations. He liked to get his blokes ready a full five minutes prior to stand-to. He glanced around at the other wagons, but no one seemed to be making much of an effort. They were lazing about drinking brews.
Mucker started to complain that no other fucker was readying themselves, so why couldn’t they grab five minutes’ extra rest? It was well out of character for him to get a bag-on like this, and it reflected how burned out they all were feeling.
The rest of the Squadron shook off their fatigue and got locked and loaded for stand-to. They were on high alert due to all the signs they’d picked up of a vehicle-borne force shadowing them. But first light revealed nothing untoward. There was no sign of any hostile presence, though the thick palm trees and reed beds cut visibility to a few hundreds yards at most. For all they knew, an entire army could be hiding out there.
The Squadron formed up in V-shaped formation for that day’s drive north. Somehow, all the men on Grey’s wagon knew that today was the day: it was make-or-break time for M Squadron. Either the locals would prove friendly and lead them to the 5th Corps’s position, or they’d warn them that the Corps was highly unlikely to welcome the small British force. Either way, they had to know – for without that kind of intel, the Squadron was on a hiding to nothing.
The sun was rising through a narrow break in the cloud cover as the vehicles crawled across the B-road that Grey had identified from his route-mapping. After the days spent traversing a desert devoid of any man-made structures, he felt weirdly exposed and vulnerable as they hit that patch of sun-baked highway. Each wagon used its machine-guns to cover those coming after it, as they moved in formation over the open expanse of tarmac. On the far side they hit the dirt track that would lead northeast towards Sirwal town, bypassing the marshy lowland area of Duwayliyat Khalaf. They made good time on that track, and by mid-afternoon it had turned into a well-graded gravel road.
It was around 1350 when the first concrete signs of human habitation hove into view. Straddling the dirt road was a tiny village of mud-walled houses, the larger ones boasting galvanized tin roofs. Each of them was shaded by a grove of palm trees, and scraggy dogs seemed to be running around everywhere. This was the first human habitation that the men of the Squadron had encountered since deploying to Iraq. Although it consisted of only half a dozen shepherds’ hovels, it felt like a proper urban settlement after their days in the wilderness.
As Grey’s wagon neared the first building, he could see a handful of women and children squatting at the roadside. The oddest thing was that they appeared to pay the approaching vehicles almost no attention at all. At the last moment a row of heads gazed up at them in curiosity, as the vehicle trundled past. There were no visible signs of fear – no screaming kids running for the cover of the nearby palm grove, or women wailing in distress and alarm.
For an instant Grey wondered whether they had mistaken the British convoy for an Iraqi military unit. Coated from head to toe in dust and grime and done up in their shemaghs, he figured they might just pass for some kind of elite Iraqi unit – most likely Republican Guard. And then he remembered that these were the people who would have most to fear from Iraqi troops.
He turned to Moth. ‘Weird, or what? They’re not scared to see us. They’re not pleased to see us. What the—?’
Before Moth could respond there was a squelch of static on the radios and the OC came up on the air.
‘Zero, all call-signs. Pull up in the centre of the village. It’s women and children only here by the looks of things, and we have to assume they’re friendly. Hand out some food, biscuits or sweets or whatever you have, in an effort to win them over. Hearts-and-minds kind of stuff and all that.’
Moth did as instructed, pulling up in a cloud of dust. Grey began heaving out the remains of their ration packs to the gathering crowd of kids, though what they’d make of boil-in-the-bag Lancashire Hotpot he couldn’t say. The kids lunged at the loot, yelling excitedly and showing off to their mates what they’d managed to grab.
The HQ Troop trundled into the village at the centre of the convoy, and pulled to a stop. The OC gestured at Sebastian, making it clear he wanted his help in talking to the locals. Sebastian made some remark to the women standing nearest, and a couple wandered over. They wore the typical black headscarves bound tight around their heads, and there was a striking fatalism about the way they carried themselves.
Grey heard a few words exchanged in Arabic. Sebastian had to be explaining that the Squadron was trying to make contact with the Iraqi 5th Corps, and asking if the villagers had any idea where they might be. For a moment it struck him how strange it was that there were no adult males in the village. But then he remembered how Saddam’s campaigns to wipe out the Kurds had targeted the men of fighting age.
Women and children weren’t immune to such attacks, but it had been the men who were always hit first. If the villagers had mistaken M Squadron for an Iraqi military unit, that might explain why there were no men. Either way there was nothing overtly hostile about the place, and it reinforced the impression that they were moving into territory where the locals would likely be friendly.
After a bare few moments, the patrol pushed onwards again, leaving the village behind them and passing into rich irrigated farmland. There were stands of luscious palm trees to left and right, and fields thick with a shoulder-high crop that looked as if it could be maize. It was the kind of terrain that Grey had been dreading running into, for it was well populated and lacked anywhere obvious in which to hide an entire Special Forces squadron.
It was approaching last light by the time the patrol left that terrain behind them, and headed into a drier, more open kind of landscape – somewhere more reminiscent of the Ninawa Desert.
The OC’s voice came up on the air, sounding cool and confident as usual. ‘Zero, all call-signs: we’ll stop here for ten minutes,’ he announced. ‘I want to recce this grid for a TLZ.’
After scouring the ground and reporting to Headquarters the location of the TLZ, the OC led the Squadron into a shallow wadi and signalled for the blokes to cut the engines. They were now some thirty kilometres north of the village, and in a low-lying oval-shaped depression. At around fifty yards from end to end, it was just about large enough to contain all of the wagons. Ahead and to the north lay a large, sandy plain, and the lake bed was set in an area resembling the dunes you sometimes find at the top of a beach.
They’d entered via a breach in the lake wall, offering a good shallow slope leading into the belly of the depression. To the far side was a steeper exit point, and all around the lakebed the walls were some six feet high and almost sheer.
It wasn’t deep enough to provide complete cover from view or from fire, but otherwise it was a fine LUP. The natural walls provided good cover, and the two exit points would enable the Squadron to leave in a hurry if needed. They sure as hell weren’t going to find a better patch of ground in which to overnight, and this was bound to be their last LUP before they reached the 5th Corps’s positions – that was assuming they could find them.
Over the last few miles Grey had got the travel kettle going. He reached across to Moth with a steaming hot boil-in-the-bag meal. As Moth took the proffered grub, Grey noticed one of the TSMs (Troop sergeant majors) coming over to have a word.
‘You and your fucking travel kettle, …’ he remarked, enviously. ‘Anyway, the OC wants everyone to know he’s really pleased with the way things are going. But best get Moth ready with his JTAC gear, just in case. We need to ensure we’ve got air over us tonight.’
‘No problem,’ Grey replied. ‘One more day’s drive should do it – get us to the 5th Corps’s location. Any intel from the villagers on where they are?’
The TSM shrugged. ‘Nah, mate. Zero. We’ll just have to keep asking.’
‘Nothing more from Headquarters?’ Grey queried.
‘Nothing. Looks like it’s up to us to push ahead and find ’em.’
The light was fading fast and the men had precious little time to organize themselves. They manoeuvred the wagons into positions of all-round defence, getting ten yards between each, so as not to make an easy target. The eastern side of the lake bed had the least cover, for the wall there was lower. Six Troop took the entire western wall of the LUP, while Four and Five would cover the east.
It was 1545 hours by the time they were all done, and the sun was sinking blood-red on the horizon. With 12 o’clock being due north, Six Troop had been left to cover from the 6 o’clock position through to 10 o’clock – so from due south to the northwest of the wadi. This included their entry point into the shallow depression – a narrow neck of a gateway just large enough to squeeze a wagon through.
Five Troop had the 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock position, covering from the northwest to the northeast of the wadi. And Four Troop was covering the 2 o’clock to 6 o’clock position – from northeast to due south. In the centre of the lake bed the OC had set up his command post, which consisted of his two vehicles complete with radio antennae, plus a couple of the quads.
As they did stand-to for last light, Grey glanced over at Sebastian. He gave an awkward thumbs-up and a grin. Now that they were so close to their objective, their resident terp was really going to have to start earning his keep, and Grey felt glad to have him with them.
‘All right?’ he mouthed at Sebastian. ‘How’s your suntan?’
Sebastian mouthed something inaudible in response. Grey figured it had to be along the lines of: Jolly good show, getting this close to those 5th Corps chaps. Probably followed by some fascinating snippet of information about the history of the local area.
Gunner, the quad force commander, wandered over to Grey’s wagon. ‘You know what?’ he muttered, as he sparked up a ciggie. ‘This is fucking wank.’
‘It is?’ Grey queried.
‘We’re almost at the bloody mission objective, and we’ve yet to have a sniff of any action.’
Grey shrugged. ‘Beware of what you wish for, mate.’
Despite the fact that they were now in more friendly territory, Grey couldn’t shake off the feeling that he’d had almost from the very start of the mission – that they were being stalked by an unseen enemy. He glanced at his watch. It was 1815 hours. Only a few minutes more of this half-light and then the Squadron would be hidden by the welcome cloak of darkness.
One of Gunner’s quad team was a Scottish guy called Angus. He was new to the Squadron, having joined around the same time as the Dude. He came over to share a last smoke. It was standard operating procedure that there was no smoking during the hours of darkness, when even the glow of a cigarette might give the position of the patrol away.
‘This is fucking shit,’ Angus remarked in a broad Scottish burr, echoing Gunner’s sentiments. ‘By now I thought we’d be flat-packing bloody ragheads.’
He took a last drag and went to flick his fag butt into the sand of the lake bed. Bang on cue there was a sudden, deafening roar from out of the desert to the north of them.
As the butt hit the deck, the gathering night was torn apart by a savage stream of tracer fire pounding in towards them.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
From out of the dusk Grey saw a thick stream of fiery bullets arcing over the far edge of the lake bed and hammering into the centre of their position. For an instant he was aware of Sebastian perched atop the signals wagon, with massive flaming rounds pounding past his ears, and then the Pinkies on the far side of the wadi opened up in a barrage of answering fire.
Grey had recognized the sound of the enemy weapon instantly: it was a bloody great 12.7mm DShK, the Russian-designed anti-aircraft gun that can churn out 600 12.7mm rounds per minute. Known as the ‘Dushka’, meaning ‘sweetie’ in Russian, it can only fire on automatic, and it is a devastating weapon when targeting low-level aircraft. But it could also be used in a ground-attack role to tear vehicles apart, as it was now.
The 12.7mm bullets the Dushka fires are the equivalent of the .50-calibre round. They can chew their way through walls and trees, and would make mincemeat out of the soft-skinned Pinkies, not to mention their human occupants. If Sebastian took a direct hit from one of those big armour-piercing rounds it would rip his arms and legs from his body, or tear his head clean off.
In the first few moments of the surprise attack the wagons from Five and Six Troop held their fire. Positioned along the western and northern sides of the wadi, it was impossible for the men to get eyes on whoever it was attacking them. It was from Four Troop’s arc that the Dushka gunner was hammering in the rounds, and it was Four Troop’s responsibility to meet fire with fire.
There seemed to be a solid stream of fire smashing into the ground right in front of Reggie’s wagon. It was ricocheting into the air over the signals vehicle like some monstrous firework display. But this was no Guy Fawkes night, and these were no fireworks. Those rounds were designed to pulverize flesh and tear apart heavy armour, let alone a squadron of unarmoured Land Rovers.
Grey figured the Iraqi gunner had to be using one-in-two tracer rounds (one normal round per tracer round), which meant there were twice as many bullets as he could actually see hammering through the air. He hoped to hell Sebastian was going to get his head down, though the Pinkie offered precious little protection against such an onslaught.
Grey had no time to worry about that now. He was scanning the terrain to the southwest of their position, convinced that this was just the opening salvo in whatever the enemy might have in store for them. Sure enough, barely seconds after the first Dushka opened up, a second stream of tracer spat out of the darkness, this one hammering in towards them from the southern end of the wadi, which put Grey’s wagon directly in the line of fire.
The solid stream of rounds belched out of the dusk like a dragon’s scorching breath, pounding over the top of Grey and Moth’s position. M Squadron was now being smashed by Dushka fire from both sides, and Grey felt certain more was coming. As he swung his weapon around to engage, he could feel the pressure waves thrown off by the bullets hammering into his skull and shoulders, which meant the massive rounds had to be passing no more than three feet away.
For an instant he flicked his eyes around to check on the Dude, perched atop of the .50-cal. He was convinced he’d see the big Yank getting the top half of his body blown off by the heavy machine-gun’s bullets, leaving just a faint pink mist on the dusk air. Sure enough, big 12.7mm tracer rounds were flaming p
ast to either side of the Dude’s head, but miraculously none seemed yet to have hit him.
‘FUCKING REVERSE THREE METRES DOWN SLOPE!’ Grey roared at Moth, straining to make himself heard above the noise of battle.
Their priority had to be to get the Dude out of the line of enemy fire. No point engaging them first, if that got their own rear gunner blown apart. Moth revved the wagon’s engine, rammed it into reverse, and with a spinning of wheels he slammed it further into the cover of the wadi and out of the line of fire.
Grey did a visual check on the Dude, saw that the Dushka rounds were now tearing past a good few feet above him, and turned back to the target. He followed the line of fiery tracer with his eyes and spotted where the enemy gunner was firing from. He was a good thousand yards away – perfect range for using the trajectory of the big machine-gun to lob rounds into the position being targeted while at the same time keeping well hidden from view. The enemy gunner was scraping rounds over the lip of a ridge that lay between his position and the lake bed, while keeping a low profile to its rear.
He’d be watching the arc of his tracer, and using that to adjust his line of fire and bring it smack-bang into the centre of the lake bed – where it would tear apart the HQ Troop, and the ricochets would smash a good number of the vehicles to either side.
But Grey could just make out the form of the enemy gunner, and that meant he could target him. There was the distinctive flash of a muzzle, and in the glare of the weapon firing he could see the unmistakable silhouette of the Dushka. He swung the GPMG around to engage. As he did so, he heard a deafening roar from right behind his head, and a solid wave of pressure slammed into the top of his skull and shoulders. The Dude had opened up with the .50-cal, the flash of the muzzle firing right above him lighting up Grey’s steel gun sights in a blinding glare.
