by Peter Mercer
The polling stations were going to be extremely tough to protect but the Yanks would be doing that. We just didn’t have the manpower for it, and none of us relished the fact that these polling stations would be getting missiles or some other sort of deadly projectile fired at them at some time. The place we were in was going to be worse, however – far, far worse for us.
We had our white trucks, which had to be camouflaged. Nine times out of ten we had to be overt when carrying out our missions, but on this occasion we had to be covert. We thought about trying to get our hands on some black paint, but we just didn’t have the time. We asked the US military if they could get us some, but, amazingly, they couldn’t source any. So it was like-it-or-lump-it time. Then we were to place the trucks at regular intervals around the perimeter. We had all the country’s leaders’ ballots in our hands. This job could turn out to be mayhem, or not, but only time would tell.
There was a wooded area around the camp we were protecting, and this made for what was probably one of the scariest missions I’ve ever encountered. We’d had our white vehicles dressed in pretty crappy camouflage, which wasn’t good. We just put as much foliage on them as possible so you couldn’t see any white, or at least as little as possible. It was quite comical, actually, to watch all the Gurkhas hacking away at the trees and chucking tons of wood and branches on the Toyotas.
The local militia were very switched on and the Yanks were driving in and out of the Iraqi ‘Butlins’ in their tanks all day – it was truly an amazing sight! When they approach it sounds and feels like an earthquake. When a battle tank (which weighs over 60 tons) comes anywhere near you, the engines are so loud and the tracks they run on make one hell of a racket. You can feel the vibration from hundreds of metres away. The first time they passed only a few metres from me I nearly shat a brick, especially as they were travelling at about 40 m.p.h.! Every insurgent knew what the fuck was going on and we just hoped we had the upper hand.
Vehicles camouflaged (as well as we could, anyway), perimeter secured, everything was coming into place. We were preparing for a battle and, in a worst-case scenario, we would take the trouble to them if needs be. We had got wire cutters in place so that, if the insurgents did try to come through the woods, we could cut the fence and circle around any insurgents who penetrated the holiday camp and go on the offensive.
As soon as the fence had been cut we could penetrate the woods. This way they wouldn’t be able to hide behind the trees and pick us off. It was that or stay as sitting ducks, stuck in the trucks, or taking some sort of cover and firing at shadows in the dark. Neither option was attractive. We needed to be able to get into the tree line. In hindsight, we should have got some camouflage fatigues from the Americans and posted a few of the lads inside the woods in covert positions, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Anyway, here we were.
That was what we were all trained for. We’d all been in some of the most famous elite units and regiments in world – we could do this, surely. We certainly had the firepower and the training. If not, we were fucked. If we lost our stronghold on this place it could jeopardise the elections – just what the insurgents wanted – so we couldn’t let this happen. This was truly a hardcore job.
On the perimeter, near the woods, it was pretty nervy, so we made a plan: at night no one was allowed out of their positions on foot – you had to be driven or you had to get on the radio and give your precise location and the direction in which you were moving. If anyone was seen walking around at night they’d be slotted (taken out). The ballot-box guys we were looking after were told this and, to make sure none of them tried to wander about at night, we posted a sentry on their accommodation.
This had to be done and was totally for their own protection – mainly because a lot of them were fucking idiots, I thought. There was bound to be some numpty trying to leave the security of their accommodation for a midnight stroll at some time or another, and we needed to prevent this. I came to the conclusion that most of them were thieving bastards and certainly couldn’t be trusted. I’m not saying that all of them were bad, but there was certainly a bad element in the group.
We were pretty sure the insurgents would try to sabotage the elections at some point, so we could obviously take no chances, and, to make all matters worse for us, we were very vulnerable. All that separated us from the main highway through Mosul were 20 metres of woodland and a wire fence, which wasn’t even barbed.
This place, looking like an old holiday complex that would have been at one time a nice place to stay, was very eerie. It seemed that the Iraqi people could have had a lot of fun here but now it was a kind of ghost town. It was all very sad, but very educational for me, though, because as you looked through the chalets, which were remarkably well equipped, you could come to the conclusion that, possibly, these people had a good life before Saddam and even during his reign. However, this holiday camp had obviously been deserted since the end of the war, as it was pretty run down. I found it all quite depressing.
The first night on the job was the worst for me. Once we had set our defences up, we just waited for what we thought would be an imminent attack from the insurgents. I was sitting in one of our Toyotas outside the accommodation reading a book. I was guarding the ballot guys. We had guys everywhere, so I could chill out. My job was only to make sure none of them wandered out.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw some movement. Someone was coming across the now heavily armed camp. Fuck! I felt a surge of adrenalin as I rolled out of the door of my truck and got into a fire position. Obviously, no one had picked up on it and this guy, who was approaching fast, looked far too tall to be an insurgent! It turned out he was one of our fucking guys! I couldn’t believe it. He came within a gnat’s arse of getting his head blown off! I actually had my safety catch off and my sights on his head before I realised it was one of our guys. He was (would you believe it?) looking for some food. I think it was for some of the soup we had on the go. I had to explain to him that we were on lockdown and I really had to bang it home to the lads that there was a real chance one of us could get killed or badly wounded if we wandered about at night.
The trouble was that some of the guys were fearless. They’d been through so much shit already that northern Iraq didn’t faze them any more. The fact that most of them were very religious didn’t help matters either, because, once they had finished their prayers in the morning, they believed that God was protecting them and nothing could harm them, that they were almost invincible – obviously nothing could be further from the truth.
After about ten cups of coffee and through a miraculously quiet night, dawn broke and I went to check on the guys – who were all fast asleep! For fuck’s sake – you could tell none of these guys were at all bothered about the situation we were in. Does that make them brave or stupid? You tell me. I gave them a bollocking and we got on with the job. If the insurgents got inside the camp we would be up shit creek. It would be a gun fight at the OK Corral for sure, and, with the darkness and staggered positions, we’d probably end up shooting a lot of our own guys.
Voters for the elections had to prove Iraqi citizenship and have been born before 31 December 1986. The elections were to be held on 15 December but this whole process could have gone on until March the following year if all didn’t go well. Iraqis living abroad were also allowed to vote as well and the International Office of Migration set up polling stations in fourteen countries that had a substantial expatriate Iraqi population.
A total of 280,303 Iraqi exiles in fourteen countries registered to vote; roughly one in four of those was eligible to do so. Sixty per cent of Iraq’s population are Shia Muslims, the rest are Sunni Muslims and Kurds. The election treated the whole country as one constituency. Political parties submitted lists of candidates and a certain number of names had to be a woman’s. Candidates had to be at least thirty years old to be eligible to stand for election.
Parties or groups with militias could not run for election and n
or could current members of the armed forces. Also barred from standing were former Ba’ath Party members (the political instrument of Saddam Hussein’s rule). Still, it looked as though a hell of a lot of Iraqis were going to turn out and vote. We had a great deal of responsibility resting on our shoulders. If this went pear-shaped it wouldn’t be good.
After returning to the perimeter and trying to explain to the guys how important it was not to sleep on the job, and after double-checking everything was OK, we all got some breakfast. As there were no cooking facilities available for us, we were eating MRE rations heated on a simple cooker – these MREs aren’t bad, actually, and can be pretty varied. You can eat everything in them cold if you have to but they are definitely a lot nicer hot.
Once breakfast was finished, it was my turn to stand guard on the gate of the camp. We did this in pairs and tried to make the best of the limited cover we had. Still, it was pretty scary stuff. This morning I was there with my mate Dan. I took one of my guys’ M240 GPMGs and slung it around my neck along with a belt of two hundred rounds of 7.62mm ammo. This thing could bring down a house, and, if someone tried a drive-by attack or tried to rush the gate, it would stop them. Also, I still had my M16. Dan was carrying his slightly smaller-calibre automatic weapon M249, but it was still deadly effective.
It was only white expats who worked the gate and the simple reason for this was that the dark skins of the Gurkhas and Fijians could sometimes confuse the US military, or at the very least make them nervy (never a good idea). So this wasn’t a racial thing, simply that, if the US military saw a couple of dark-skinned guys, heavily armed and dressed in civilian clothing (as we all were), they might just get trigger-happy. So, to remove the risk to our guys, only the white expats would do the gate work at one of the two main entrances.
There was a big steel gate that we kept shut at all times, but had to open if an American patrol wanted to come in. The situation was quite intense because we were all very well aware that the threat of drive-by shootings was probable, so if the gates weren’t opened quickly enough for the American tanks and troop carriers, they would, most likely, have ploughed straight on through them – these guys didn’t like to stop for anything.
The ballot counters we were looking after were a right unruly bunch. They were constantly squabbling and fighting. It was not uncommon to see a fist fight. It made me wonder sometimes how the hell this country could ever sort itself out. Still, we were going great so far – no firefights, nothing – though I think the fact that we had American battle tanks trundling in and out on a regular basis had something to do with putting the insurgents off. However, if the insurgents wanted to, they could easily create an effective attack on our vulnerable camp. Fingers crossed that this wasn’t going to be the case.
The elections were now approaching, starting the next day in fact, and the transport trucks turned up midmorning to take the ballot counters to their stations. We piled them all onto the trucks, all of them still squabbling. This is when I thought it was most likely the insurgents would strike, because, for sure, one of these guys would have a connection to, or could actually be, an insurgent. The insurgents could be sneaky bastards at the best of times and I wouldn’t put it past them to try to infiltrate the group and strike from the inside. Our only defence, up to this point, was to keep constantly searching the counters on a regular basis for any kind of contraband, be it weapons, explosives or even knives.
Once the ballot guys left we had the camp to ourselves and we could all relax a little bit – have a bird bath and a shave maybe (the shower facilities weren’t working, so we were roughing it).
The elections had a huge response with around 80 per cent of the population turning out. A lot didn’t turn up because of the threat of violence, but it was still a good turnout, especially when you hear that only something like 61 per cent of the British population voted in the 2005 general election (and that was higher than in the 2001 election!).
We were now waiting in anticipation for the calls from the polling stations about any trouble, which we were sure was going to happen. Later that day, the calls started arriving – a lot of stations were attacked, but the overall picture was that the voting process was a success. People in northern Iraq really seemed to want change, and their huge turnout proved this. Change was evidently not going to be rapid in this country, though, and they are going to be shooting the crap out of each other for a long time to come. But we weren’t employed to be ethnic policemen. Kurd, Arab, Sunni, Shia, whatever – if anyone had a go at us we would retaliate; we were there to do a job. We weren’t ethnic social workers either. We’d seen violence on all sides. We’d driven past blown-up American Humvees with burning American body parts, which makes it hard not to pick sides or get angry, but we were mercenaries, pure and simple, and we just went where the money was.
There was a tactical problem we had with this camp we were looking after. Once you’ve been in a certain position for a while the enemy get to know exactly where you are and your numbers. They have lookouts posted and very good intelligence. The longer we were there the greater the threat. But we were guns for hire and no one cared about our welfare all that much (I tell a lie, though: some of the senior American officers really did seem to give a damn).
After the elections the ballot guys returned in their trucks and we started the process of getting rid of them, thank God – I’ve never met such a bigger bunch of arseholes. So when they eventually went we all breathed a sigh of relief and prepared to leave this holiday camp. We pulled all the bushes off the trucks on the perimeter and made ready to move. We pulled out of this Iraqi ‘Butlins’ as fast and effectively as possible. It seemed to work: we had no bother and not a shot was fired in anger at us. Of course, our reputation as hard, efficient bastards could have preceded us, but more likely it was down to luck. Whatever, our patrol was on its way back to the relative safety of a US military base and hot showers and some good food. We’d survived this epic. Now we would wait for our next mission, but we didn’t know what this would be; we never did. Only time would tell.
We rolled into camp in typical fashion. Everyone expected one of us, if not a few of us, to be towed in or to have been blown to pieces, but this time we weren’t. We were all in one piece. Life was sweet. After our debrief I went to my pad and I chilled for a while, then went on the Internet to catch up on my emails. Then I went down the gym. The Gurkhas had a few shots of whisky and the Fijians went for food. All was good! The suicide squad had survived another mission, thank God! (Whose God doesn’t matter – we just survived it.)
Once the elections were over and we had withdrawn from the Iraqi ‘Butlins’, I never did find out what became of that camp. Because of the state that northern Iraq is in, most redundant properties soon get occupied by squatters. Hopefully, this place could house quite a few people. It would be nice to think that a few poverty-stricken folk could benefit from what was a relatively nice place. The problem was that most people were still scared shitless at this time and feared change, because they’d been persecuted for so long. A lot of these people were so timid they wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Still, if they haven’t got hope, what have they got?
Chapter 12
Getting Injured
I’d been doing this job for almost a year now and I was feeling quite confident about it. I’d lost a few mates and comrades but I hadn’t been injured, so I felt sure that it would never happen to me.
One particular wintery and overcast morning in November we were coming back from a routine mission and approaching camp when we came, yet again, under enemy fire. This time I wasn’t so lucky, and a stray round, a 7.62mm (or it may have been shrapnel), hit me in the chest. My body armour stopped the round, or whatever it was, from penetrating my body but the plates in my jacket were fucked – totally smashed. However, the impact from that projectile broke six of my ribs, not that I knew that at the time.
I remember feeling as if I’d been punched in the chest and I thought, ‘Oh Go
d, this is it – fuck!’ I was sure that I was a goner and I realised that I’d never felt so scared in my entire life. Then I felt a massive pain and then I felt nothing.
I regained consciousness some thirty hours later in hospital. I wasn’t sure at first if I was still alive and it took me a few moments to realise that I was in bed. I was still in the north of Iraq and was in a US military hospital. I managed to attract the attention of one of the nurses and she came over to speak to me. After checking my vital signs she went off to fetch a doctor to come and speak to me.
The pain in my chest was immense; it was hurting even to breathe. The doctor came and told me that I’d been very lucky. Fuck me! I didn’t feel lucky at that moment! He told me that my body armour had stopped whatever it was from penetrating my body, but that the impact had shattered or broken my ribs – hence the pain. He said that they were arranging for me to be transferred back to one of their hospitals in Germany and not to worry: I was going to be fine.
I lay there wondering what the fuck had happened and, more importantly, what had happened to the rest of my patrol. Were they all right? Was I the only one injured? The questions were racing through my head and I was desperate to see a familiar face who could tell me what had happened. I must have drifted off to sleep, because the next time I came round I saw one of my mates, Steve, standing at the end of my bed.
‘Finally!’ he said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to wake up, you lazy bastard.’ I gathered my wits and then burst out with all the questions that had been preoccupying me earlier. He told me that I was the only injury and that my Fijian driver had just got the fuck out of there as fast as he could and got me back to base. He said that I’d had them worried but he could now go back and tell the lads that I was just lazing around in bed and would be fine.