Soldier A: Behind Iraqi Lines

by Shaun Clarke

  ‘Very good,’ Hailsham murmured.

  ‘He came off his seat screaming, dropping his Kalashnikov right on top of me, and I grabbed it and was sitting up and firing before the others knew what was happening. I did the six of them and the driver – shot him through the back of the neck. The truck went out of control and raced on across the desert, which conveniently was flat, and finally slowed down of its own accord, then stopped altogether. Old Red helped me throw the stiffs out, including the driver, then I got behind the wheel and we drove off – not after you, in case we ran into the ones following you, but 45 degrees the other way, hoping to circle back towards you.’

  ‘Obviously you didn’t make it,’ Hailsham said.

  Johnny Boy sighed melodramatically. ‘No, sir. We drove for about two hours and then – would you believe it? – we were attacked by an American F-15E, using Sidewinder missiles and cannon fire. We dived out of the truck just before it was hit, but Polanski didn’t manage to run away as fast as me and so received a piece of flying debris in his gut when the truck blew apart.’

  ‘He’s older than you,’ Hailsham remarked.

  ‘Yes, boss, that’s true.’

  ‘We must practise humility,’ Hailsham told him. ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘That piece of burning-hot, sharp metal punched a hole right though him, just missing his stomach, though still losing him an awful lot of blood.’ The trooper shook his head in disbelieving recollection. ‘Can you guess what old John Wayne did then?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll inform us,’ Rickett said.

  ‘With no more than a field dressing and morphine to keep him going, he walked with me for two days and nights, constantly cursing his wound but not letting it bring him down, and boasting that this was the kind of Al endurance number that only the supermen of his Yankee Delta Force could pull off.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Hailsham said wearily.

  ‘Then, on the third day,’ Johnny Boy went on, oblivious to Hailsham’s gentle irony, ‘we came across an Iraqi border post, near Saudi Arabia. It only had a few guards inside and one truck outside. Having taken a couple of hand-grenades off the Iraqis I’d killed, I sneaked up on the border post at last light, mailed them a couple of grenades in through the window, and ran like hell back to where Red, though still bleeding profusely, was keeping me covered with the Kalashnikov we’d stolen from the Iraqis who’d captured us. The border post went up in smoke and all the guards inside were killed. We took the truck parked near the gate and drove to the border. When we got there, we ditched the truck and weapons and crossed over on foot, with old Red, now bleeding worse than ever, not stopping once. We found ourselves in Scud Boulevard and the Yanks – some guys from Red’s Delta Force – came out of nowhere to pick us up. They choppered us back to Riyadh, rushed Red to the medics, and shoved me onto a passing Chinook to get me back here. So here I am, boss.’

  The trooper sat back in his chair and beamed at them all. However, the praise he was so clearly expecting failed to materialize.

  ‘About bloody time,’ Hailsham said instead. ‘Now let’s get back to business.’

  While Johnny Boy was looking distinctly hard done by, Hailsham, trying to hide his grin, turned back to Ricketts.

  ‘As I was saying, Sergeant-Major, we’re going back into Iraq. While the advance is continuing, there’s still lots for us to do – espionage, ambush, disruption, confusion, and general hit-and-run raids against communications towers and the remaining Scuds. We won’t be short of work.’

  ‘Where is it this time?’ Ricketts asked.

  ‘We’re going back to Scud Alley.’

  Chapter 16

  For the next five days, as the war wound down to a close, Hailsham’s men roamed and struck with growing confidence at an enemy increasingly demoralized. Their favourite hunting ground was Wadi Amiq, also known as Wadi Amij, running west between two main roads from the Euphrates to the town of Ar Rutbah – part of the area known as Scud Alley.

  Having no specific targets, but determined to cause as much disruption and confusion as possible with hit-and-run raids on anything crossing their path, the men spent the first day roaming the terrain with the aid of their Magellan satellite navigation systems, prepared to take on anything they could find.

  They found nothing at all. On the second day, however, when cruising across the desert at noon, they spotted a mobile Iraqi convoy of fourteen vehicles, including Scud transporter-erectors and escorts for defence against attack by tanks and aircraft. Parked alongside the trail, the convoy was under camouflage, but clearly preparing to move off again. As it did so, Hailsham followed, calling an air strike while on the move.

  Thirty minutes later four F-15s arrived to attack the column one after another with Sidewinder missiles. As usual, the explosions were spectacularly ferocious, creating great mushrooms of spiralling sand and flying debris of all kinds. But when the sand had settled down it was clear that only one of the four strikes had hit the target, leaving a solitary transporter-erector in ruins in an immense, blackened shell hole. When the four strike aircraft flew off to return to base, the rest of the Iraqi column remained untouched.

  ‘Bloody Air Force!’ Johnny Boy said in disgust. ‘They couldn’t hit a barn door if you took them by the hand and led them up to it.’

  ‘The wonders of technology,’ Ricketts added. ‘We didn’t paint the targets with our designators and there’s the sorry result – practically nothing.’

  ‘It’s back to good, old-fashioned ground warfare,’ Hailsham said. ‘Let’s try the MILANs.’

  With the LSVs bringing up the rear, Hailsham led his Pink Panther Land Rovers forward to a location within range, and within sight, of the enemy column. There the men quickly uncovered their MILAN anti-tank guided missile units, one to each Pink Panther. At 765 mm in length, weighing 27.68kg, and with a bulky launcher-guidance unit, periscopic optical sight, missile tube with folding wings, wide exit point for 6.66kg shells, and an exceptionally sturdy tripod, the MILAN was an impressive piece of equipment to have mounted on the back of a Land Rover.

  Experts one and all, the troopers in the Pink Panthers picked separate targets in the column, then aimed and fired almost simultaneously. The sound of the combined backblasts was impressive, with smoke spewing from both ends of the MILANs. Less than ten seconds later an Iraqi transporter-erector and three trucks exploded, virtually at the same time.

  ‘So much for the Air Force!’ Danny said, glancing at Ricketts and offering a rare smile. ‘Let the bastards beat that!’

  But even before the smoke of the explosions had cleared, the Iraqi triple-A machine guns mounted on wheeled transports hit back with a continuous barrage of fire, causing bullets to ricochet off the Pink Panthers with a harsh metallic drumming while the sand was stitched in jagged lines about them.

  Realizing that he was outgunned, Hailsham ordered the Pink Panthers to make a tactical withdrawal, out of range of the Iraqi machine-guns. Then he called on US air power again.

  This time, when the F-15s swept down, they struck more accurately, making strikes along most of the column, causing the few remaining trucks and one transporter-erector to race away from billowing black smoke and flames toward the sun-streaked horizon.

  While heading back to base, Hailsham’s column was attacked by an A-10 pilot who obviously mistook the Land Rovers and LSVs, moving almost bumper to bumper, for a single long Iraqi vehicle, perhaps a mobile Scud launcher. Coming in low, the pilot raked the column with his cannons, causing two of the Land Rovers to explode while the others scattered quickly, churning up clouds of sand, to avoid suffering a similar fate.

  ‘Stupid bloody Air Force!’ Johnny Boy exploded, shaking his free fist at the departing aircraft as he roared past Captain Hailsham’s Land Rover on his green Honda. ‘Are you all fucking blind?’

  ‘I don’t blame him,’ Captain Hailsham said, standing up in his Pink Panther and clearing the sand from his eyes with a delicate, probing finger. ‘I’m beginning to
wonder myself. OK, driver, take us back to the others.’

  Regrouping after the attack, the men in the remaining vehicles were relieved to find that the occupants of the two damaged Pink Panthers had managed to jump out before their petrol tanks exploded. Dividing the men among the remaining vehicles, they left the damaged Land Rovers smouldering in the sand and headed back across the barren desert.

  Less than an hour later they came over a low hill to find themselves facing a heavily defended Iraqi observation tower. They had barely seen it when a barrage of gunfire from a whole troop of Iraqi militiamen caused them to urgently spread out in different directions and circle back to the top of the ridge, which gave some protection.

  While some of them jumped out of the vehicles to give covering fire from behind the Pink Panthers, others put down a heavy barrage with the vehicles’ 7.62 GPMGs or rear-mounted 0.5in Browning heavy machine-guns.

  Even from where he was kneeling at the back of a Pink Panther, leaning out repeatedly to fire his SLR, Ricketts could see the sand boiling around the Iraqis as the rapid fire of the machine-guns tore at the ground around them, between them and below them. Some of them fell over, cut down by the hail of bullets, but the others, clearly seasoned troopers, merely slipped back into the shadow of the observation tower and released another barrage of gunfire from there.

  This caused sand to spew up around the SAS men, as well as ricocheting dangerously off the Pink Panthers and LSVs.

  ‘If those bastards hit my bike,’ Johnny Boy said, obviously frustrated at not being able to do much other than hide behind the Pink Panther, ‘I think I’ll go apeshit.’

  ‘Those Iraqis are well hidden in the shadows of that tower,’ Ricketts said, ‘while we’re out here in the open like sitting ducks. I say we stop worrying about the militiamen and take the tower out instead.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Hailsham replied. Twisting around to glance back along the line of Pink Panthers, he said: ‘Go down the line, Willoughby, and tell the men with the LAWs and mortars to keep striking at the base of that tower. I want them to bring it down.’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ the trooper said with a cocky schoolboy’s grin. ‘I’m on my way, boss.’

  ‘You stay here,’ Ricketts said. ‘I’ll go instead. I want to make sure they do this properly. OK, boss?’

  ‘Fine,’ Hailsham said.

  ‘Can’t I come with you?’ Johnny Boy begged.

  ‘OK,’ Ricketts said. He crawled down the line until he reached the Pink Panthers run by the team with the 60mm light anti-tank weapon, or LAW – a single-shot rocket firing a 66mm warhead capable of penetrating tanks and aircraft at 300 metres. When he told the LAW team what he wanted, one of them removed the protective caps from each end of the launcher, then extended the tube containing the rocket to its full length of 90cm. The folding sight popped up automatically. The second man held the launcher on his shoulder and looked along the sight. Ricketts gave him the target, but told him to wait for his signal. He then crawled over to the mortar team crouched behind the adjoining Pink Panther.

  The L16 ML 81mm mortar has an adjustable bipod supporting the tube that holds the sighting mechanism. With a range of over five kilometres, it is usually fired at a target identified by a forward observer; but in this case the compass bearing would be ignored in favour of guesswork, using the calibrated dial sight for aiming. When Ricketts told the mortar team what he wanted, one of the men adjusted the bipod to give the nearest correct angle for the estimated range, then waited for Ricketts to signal.

  Having given both teams estimated measurements for the two front supports of the observation tower, where sand was still spitting wildly from the relentless SAS fire, Ricketts raised and then lowered his right hand.

  The LAW and the mortar fired at the same time. After a few seconds – though it seemed longer than that – two simultaneous explosions erupted on either side of the base of the tower, just missing it, but killing some of the Iraqi soldiers firing out of its shadow.

  ‘Fuck,’ one of the LAW team said. ‘Too short.’

  ‘Not by much,’ his partner said. ‘We just need about five more degrees elevation and we should hit it right on the nose.’

  ‘Go to it,’ Ricketts said. ‘When you get the proper range and actually hit the base of the tower, keep shelling the exact same spot until you blow it away. If the mortar team does the same to the other side, the whole caboose should fall down.’

  ‘Right on top of those fucking militiamen,’ Johnny Boy enthused.

  ‘You’ve got it,’ Ricketts replied.

  The Iraqi response to the shelling was an extended burst of machine-gun fire from the observation post on top of the tower and a more violent barrage from the militiamen hidden in the shadows beneath it. Safe behind their Pink Panthers, the LAW and mortar teams reloaded their weapons, raised the elevation a few degrees, and fired off another simultaneous round. This time the explosions appeared to be right on target, but when the swirling smoke and spewing sand finally cleared away, it was evident that the shells had again fallen short, though dispatching more militiamen in the process.

  ‘Third time lucky,’ one of the LAW men said.

  ‘No question, mate,’ his partner replied.

  They were correct. The third set of simultaneous explosions erupted right under the crisscrossing steel supports of the tower, blackening and buckling them slightly, as well as killing more Iraqi troops.

  ‘That’s it,’ Ricketts said. ‘You’re dead on target. Now keep pouring those shells on exactly the same spot and you should be able to bring that bastard down.’

  ‘It’s as good as done,’ the LAW man said.

  Though the Iraqis were still managing to keep up enough fire-power to cause devastation to the ground around the SAS troop, with bullets ricocheting off the vehicles and making the sand explode in jagged, snake-like lines about them, the repeated shelling by the LAW and 81mm mortar, combined with the relentless small-arms fire of the rest of the squadron, soon turned the base of the observation tower into an inferno of spitting, swirling sand and smoke. That the Iraqis still managed to return the fire at all was amazing, since it seemed they must surely choke to death, if not actually dying in the hail of bullets. Yet they did courageously return the fire, albeit with diminishing ferocity, while the supports of the tower behind them buckled more with each explosion, smouldered, turned blacker, and the structure itself began to tilt forward at a dangerous angle.

  Though the machine-gunner high up in the observation post kept firing, some of the observers started clambering down the ladder, clearly frightened that the tower was going to topple.

  It did so before any of the fleeing men reached the ground. As two final explosions smashed through the buckled lower supports, the tower tilted forward still further, the ladder snapped free and the men scrambling down it screamed as they fell off and plunged up to fifty feet to the ground. The tower was now leaning even more, with its support girders buckling and breaking, and the militiamen on the ground started running as it finally crashed down.

  With the Iraqi troops on the ground coming out into the open, many were either killed in the withering hail of fire from the SAS or died when the enormous tower crushed them under tons of crumpling, shrieking metal. Its collapse shook the desert floor and created a mushroom cloud of sand that obscured the men screaming and dying in a tangle of steel.

  Even before the spiralling sand had subsided, Johnny Boy was back on his Honda, driving with one hand, brandishing his Browning pistol in the other, leading the Pink Panthers and LSVs towards the few Iraqis who had miraculously escaped and were trying to take cover behind the wreckage. The trooper ignored the bullets whining past his head, though he weaved left and right to make himself more difficult to hit and eventually swept out and in again, coming up behind his victims to pick them off one by one as he roared past.

  Meanwhile the Pink Panthers and LSVs continued advancing from the front, but spread out to form two semicircles that encompassed the wrec
kage. The men fired on the move, keeping up a relentless barrage, not stopping until the handful of remaining Iraqis, now dazed and terrified, threw down their weapons and waved their shemaghs like flags, in surrender.

  Captain Hailsham used a hand signal to indicate ‘Cease fire’.

  The sudden silence was eerie, as was the sight of the surviving militiamen raising their hands in the ruins, ghostlike in the swirling dust and smoke, covered in dust themselves, surrounded by a multitude of dead, some shot, others crushed by the girders, which, now littering the desert floor and obscured by drifting dust, formed an immense, hideous sarcophagus of steel.

  After accepting the surrender of the ten surviving Iraqis, Hailsham divided them between the Pink Panthers and drove them back to base, where a soft-topped truck with armed escort drove them on to the FOB. From there they would be taken to one of the growing number of Allied POW camps.

  Having disposed of the prisoners, Hailsham let his men have a good night’s rest, then led them back into the desert for another day of hit-and-run raids.

  Locating another, less heavily defended Iraqi observation post, they engaged in another fire-fight, killing two Iraqis and taking half a dozen prisoners. That was Day Two.

  During Day Three they called in an air strike against a large radar complex built around a microwave communications tower. The complex was pulverized and the tower collapsed into the dust, leaving nothing but debris on the smoke-wreathed plain and another bunch of prisoners to be looked after.

  On Day Four, as the increasingly successful column of Pink Panthers and LSVs made its way back toward the Saudi border, they were attacked by another troop of Iraqis. This time, however, the Iraqis had the advantage, being strung out along, and partially hidden by, an irregular ridge that blocked the path of the SAS column.

  The ambush opened with simultaneous mortar explosions that tore up the ground between the Pink Panthers and LSVs. One of the latter was picked up by an explosion and slewed to the side, cutting a groove through the ground and hurling up sand behind it, before rolling over and coming to rest upside down, throwing its occupants clear. One of the unfortunate crew remained where he was lying, limbs akimbo, splashed with blood, but the other stood up and was immediately flung onto his back by a savage burst of machine-gun fire.