Bouncers and Bodyguards

by Robin Barratt

  It was while I was on the initial three-day course that I decided to qualify and go to Iraq. I was given a list of contractors, and a friend of mine called Craig Hales, who was also on the course, heard that a company called Hart Security had just secured a major contract. They were a lot smaller than the other major players setting up in Iraq and probably a lot better to work for as a result. Hart was a fairly new company, originally founded in 1999 by Richard Westbury, who had previously been the chief executive of Defence Systems, so they seemed to have a good commercial manager. I sent off my application and was called down to London a week later for an interview. I thought the interview went well, and the fact I was a Legionnaire seemed to help – 95 per cent of their staff, they said, were ex-military or ex-Special Forces.

  I was expecting to hear back from them pretty quickly, but days turned into a couple of weeks, then a month, then six weeks. Then early one morning, and almost exactly six weeks after my initial interview, the telephone suddenly rang. It was just past 9 a.m. I had had a late night and was still half asleep, so I initially thought about letting it ring, but curiosity took hold, and I sleepily picked up the receiver. Did I still want a job? ‘Fuck, yes,’ I almost shouted. I was told to be at Heathrow airport in 48 hours. The first contract was for ten weeks.

  After returning home, I decided to go out one more time. Hart had called to say that they had one of the most important and dangerous contracts in post-war Iraq and to ask whether I would be interested. Again, it was a case of, ‘Fuck, yes!’ And again, I was given 48 hours’ notice and told to pick up my tickets to Kuwait from the Emirates desk at the airport. I have to say that my wife was not pleased. It was Christmas, after all, and a time for family and friends and log fires and ‘Jingle Bells’, not for scrambling frantically through the sand, being chased by a deranged fanatical Iraqi who believes his God would welcome him with open arms if he blew the arms and legs off a British non-believer. Of course, Iraq is not really like that – we never once scrambled through the sand.

  After collecting my tickets, checking in and making my way through Customs, I met up with a few other guys who were also on their way out into the field – it was good to not have to sit alone, thinking of the missus waiting for me back at home and the heat and dust and shit to come. Like me, most of the guys had been out before, so we had a lot to talk about.

  Just before we boarded, I called my wife, but she didn’t answer. Maybe she was on the toilet, or doing her hair, or maybe she just didn’t want to answer, but I left a short, cheerful message, telling her that I loved her, that I would be back soon and not to worry, because everything would be fine – as if that would make a difference. For me, this was much better than actually speaking to her, as I was never any good at saying goodbyes.

  After what seemed a fairly quick six-hour flight, we arrived and were met by a Hart representative holding up a big placard. Once we had all gathered together and were checked off his list, we were ushered to a waiting minibus. Leaving the airport terminal and chilly England and entering the searing, oppressive heat of the Middle East is a complete shock. It is hard to imagine a wall of heat, but that is exactly what it is like – like being slammed up against an invisible brick. Immediately, you start to sweat. I was used to the feeling, as I had already been out to Iraq and had lived and worked in hot climes with the Legion, but for the newcomers it was a shock. Thankfully, the minibus was air-conditioned.

  We drove through the centre of Kuwait City to a rented safe house, where we were to spend the night before going into Iraq the following morning. Most of us hadn’t yet signed a contract for the trip, as recruitment had been rushed due to the large number of personnel needed for the job. Therefore, we didn’t know anything about the job – we just knew it was going to be fucking dangerous. I signed a nine-week contract, visas and permits were sorted, insurance and waiver forms were signed, and the rest of the administration associated with sending Westerners into a war zone was hastily completed.

  While this was all being sorted out by the guy who had picked us up from the airport and a couple of his administrative assistants, we were allowed to go into town for an evening stroll and a bit of shopping. I spent most of the money I had, just in case something happened to me and I ended up coming home in a body bag.

  That night, I was restless. It was hard to sleep, as memories of my previous tour kept creeping into my mind: the few contact situations I had experienced; a round slamming into the side of our vehicle; the adrenalin rush I felt as we reversed our vehicle out of a contact zone and sprayed the building that we thought the hostile fire had come from. Was I really going back? Damn right I was!

  The next day, we were taken in a convoy to the Iraqi border, where we passed quickly through a Kuwaiti checkpoint then on to an American checkpoint. The Americans seemed to take for ever to check our documents and papers. The lads manning the checkpoint were a great bunch but paranoid as fuck, even though no Iraqis have yet blown themselves up on the Iraq–Kuwait border. I bet they were as happy as could be when they were told they would be on that post as opposed to working on streets in the centre of Baghdad.

  After passing through both checkpoints, we were in Iraq, where we were met by two more Hart close protection teams. We were each handed an AK-47 and two magazines, which we all hastily checked. The nerves of the previous evening had all but disappeared, and with the AK in my hand I felt back at home. My wife always said that I had a stupid grin on my face whenever I had my weapon in my hand, and I knew what she meant – it felt good. Weapons are compulsive and addictive, and absolutely necessary in a place like Iraq – you simply would not survive as a Westerner without a weapon.

  Once we had checked and signed for our weapons, we were driven to the Hart compound inside Basra Airport complex, where the British Forces were based. Basra Airport is the second-largest airport in Iraq and located south of the city. On my first tour, Hart had based themselves in and operated from a large villa in the city itself, but due to the elevated risk, coupled with the number of times they were mortared, they wisely decided that it was a lot more logical, and infinitely safer, to move into the airport complex and nearer to the British Army.

  We had a few minutes to arrange ourselves and settle into our dorms, then we were all mustered to the courtyard. There were over 90 personnel altogether; there were 20 or so in the team that had just come in from Kuwait with me, and the rest had arrived over the previous 48 hours. We were the last of the batch, which was why we were mustered so quickly after we arrived. Apparently, everyone had been eagerly awaiting the last batch of fresh meat from the UK.

  Because of the extremely important, high-risk contract Hart had just won, they’d embarked on a massive recruitment drive, signing up almost anyone with a security-related background, including lots of doormen from the UK. I have worked the clubs and pubs myself on and off for many years, so I know the job well, and I can usually spot a doorman a mile away. Standing outside in the searing 40°C heat, it was easy to spot the nightclub bouncers amongst the many ex-soldiers. I fondly remembered the story Robin had told me during the initial three-day course I’d attended. He’d worked in Bosnia during the conflict and had secured a contract to pick up mercenaries from Zagreb Airport and take them to the Hrvatska Vojska (Croatian Army) camp near the front line, where they would be put through their paces before being sent into action. They were not really mercenaries, as they didn’t get paid – the Croatian Army always fervently maintained that they never employed mercenaries during that particular conflict. Instead, they were unpaid volunteers, and many of them were from the UK. Robin told me that those who were full of bravado, boasting and bragging and doing their best to look hard, would shit themselves at the first sound of a mortar shell or the first live round whizzing past their ears. They would literally crap their pants, and it seemed to me that a few of the guys who looked very much like nightclub doormen standing amongst the rest of us might have been doing the same thing.

  Sam, the project
manager, stood on a small podium in front of us all and told us that some of the team would be working in Basra, while the rest would be sent to central Baghdad on an extremely high-risk operation. Before we had even been allocated our assignments, and to my utter amazement, about six of the guys who looked as though their pants were a lot stickier than they had been a few minutes previously put up their hands and said that they had changed their minds and felt they didn’t have what it took to go to Baghdad, and could they please stay in Basra. What a bunch of utter cunts. The rest of the team almost collapsed with laughter. Sam screamed at them, telling them to fuck off, and within the hour they were back on the bus towards the border, where they were left to make their own way home. There was no room for people who didn’t have the bottle for the job, and for the life of me I could not understand how some cunts could come so far and then lose their bottle at the last minute – surely they knew what they were there for? It is ‘virtual’ bravado. Being a big man in a small pond somehow makes some people believe that they could be a big man in a fucking huge pond somewhere else, but the reality is very different. These people are only brave in the small, insignificant world of their own nightclub door – anywhere else, they are cowards and cunts. The sad fact is that I have heard that some of those wankers who were sent home actually went on to tell other people that they’d served in Iraq in private security!

  Sam explained to the rest of us who weren’t packing our bags and changing our trousers back in the dorm that the job in Baghdad was far more dangerous than any other job the company had taken on, and only those who were completely right for the assignment would be asked to go. As he said this, I smiled to myself, because I realised that the cunts who didn’t want to go to Baghdad probably wouldn’t have been chosen anyway.

  Sam asked for volunteers, and I was probably the first to put my hand up. I couldn’t wait. I hadn’t come all the way to Iraq not to see some real action and not to get involved in something risky and dangerous. There was only a handful of us who had been with Hart before, and as Sam counted the hands he recognised me from my last tour. ‘This is your second time out with Hart, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied casually in army mode. He told me that because it was my second time with the company, I didn’t have to go on that particular mission – there were other less dangerous jobs he could assign me to. ‘But I want this job, sir,’ was my swift reply. He nodded his acceptance, and the job was mine.

  The next day, we were split into two groups, consisting of four or five teams each. Because I was bilingual, I was put into a half-English, half-French team; astonishingly, it even included a couple of guys whom I’d served with in the Legion. The first group were driving up to Baghdad in convoy with all our equipment, baggage, etc., while the rest of us were being sent to the capital by helicopter. I really didn’t fancy going all that way in convoy; it was a long, arduous and uncomfortable journey, and I was therefore really pleased when my name was called in the group travelling by helicopter.

  We regrouped at Baghdad Airport that same evening and were given the exact details of the task. I must be honest that it did come as a bit of a shock when I realised just how high profile the job was.

  Each team consisted of eight ‘internationals’ – the foreign contingent – and sixteen ‘nationals’ – Iraqi guards who were employed by Hart. The vehicles for the assignment were to be totally standard local cars with local plates – no armour or markings or anything out of the ordinary. At first, I was horrified, but it proved to be a stroke of good thinking, as throughout the assignment we could travel freely around town and on the motorways without anyone giving us so much as a second glance – unlike American security companies, such as Blackwater, who used huge white Ford pickups that stood out a mile and made wonderfully massive targets. ‘Typical Americans,’ I thought whenever I heard of another white pickup coming under fire, whereas we never once had someone even look our way, let alone fire a gun at us.

  Each team was to be holed up in a warehouse in the centre of the city. Our job was to drive from the warehouse to the airport two to three times a day. Once there, we would form up a new convoy with six to seven forty-feet trailers, containing portable voting stations, ballot boxes and all the necessary equipment and materials for setting up polling stations for the upcoming elections to select a new Iraqi government. We were then to escort the convoys back to the warehouses so that the electoral equipment could be securely stored until the elections were ready to be held. With the political mayhem and social turmoil in Iraq, these convoys made much bigger and more important targets than the American soldiers patrolling the streets.

  We were taken in convoy to the warehouse. To our complete horror, we discovered that not only was the warehouse in the middle of Baghdad, but it was in constant daily use by local traders and businessmen – it was used for storing wheat, sugar, oil and other foodstuffs, and trucks and lorries would come and go, delivering and collecting, all day, every day. We were told in any one day that there could be anything up to 200 trucks and possibly up to 1,000 workers coming and going. And we only had control of about a third of the warehouse. It was a complete and utter fucking nightmare.

  As we settled in and surveyed our temporary new home, the Americans turned up with two or three heavy trailers, containing concrete blocks and giant sandbags, which we used to try and form some kind of last line of defence should we come under heavy and sustained attack.

  The plan was for half of the international close protection team to go backwards and forwards to the airport with all of the Iraqi nationals, leaving just four of us to guard the warehouse and equipment until the team returned. It took about a week to escort the convoys with all of the ballot boxes and polling stations from the airport. Once all the materials and equipment had been collected, we spent a further week looking after them before the Iraqi national guard turned up with the election committee officials to organise, separate and despatch the stuff out so that polling stations could be constructed around the country.

  After the election, all the votes were brought back to the warehouse for us to guard until they were ready to be taken to the airport for counting. Things heated up for us once we had the votes in our dirty, grubby little hands. We all felt like we were protecting Fort Knox and then some. We had the future of the country under our noses, and it seemed as though everyone in Iraq knew it – especially the fanatics and extremists. As we patrolled the dim exterior of the warehouse, there was an almost constant sound of gunfire in the air – the city sounded like bonfire night on steroids. Nights were worse – the bastard Iraqis just would not let us get a minute’s sleep, and the heavens were filled with the thuds and tremors of an almost constant barrage of mortar shells, which felt as though they were being aimed directly at our tired little heads.

  Life in the warehouse was completely shit. It was a big unit divided into three sections; my team had the third section, furthest from the main gate. Because the warehouse was in daily use, we had to quickly build a makeshift defence barrier between us and the rest of the yard. The lorries that were coming and going and the hundreds of fucking workers walking around were supposed to be controlled and guarded by the local Iraqi guards based at the main gate – but these Iraqi guards were about as useful as a chocolate coffee mug. We also had to man the corridor area leading to our part of the warehouse and make sure that no one wandered, accidentally or otherwise, into our area. We were instructed to shoot anyone who even remotely looked like a threat – the consequences of destroying even a small part of the material we were guarding was immensely grave, both politically and socially. To lose votes from the first so-called Iraqi democratic free election could bring the civil unrest in Iraq to even greater heights.

  Our part of the warehouse was about 200 feet by 75 feet and had previously been used to store sugar. There was sugar all over the floor, and during the night, in the pitch black between the volleys of mortars and the near constant sound of gunfire, the only
noise you could hear – apart from the occasional snores of our team leader – was the steady scurrying of rats below our beds. We needed the warehouse to be in blackout during the night, as we didn’t want to highlight our position within the unit.

  On our first evening in the warehouse, we made makeshift beds by laying a couple of wooden pallets together on the floor with our sleeping bags on top. However, after trying to kip for one night on an uncomfortable wooden pallet with the sound of gunfire and mortars keeping us awake and fat rats scuttling all around, we were supplied with some slightly more comfortable US camp beds. Our kitchen area was in the same room and consisted of a simple gas stove balanced on a pile of pallets. Our dining table was a piece of wood on . . . guess what? Yep, a fucking pile of pallets. I am sure that I even tried to shag a pallet in a dream one night.

  The only thing we couldn’t do with pallets was eat them, so at the start of our assignment we were given a few boxes of US Army rations, which kept us going. Now and then, the US Army popped in with an occasional warm lunch when they were passing on patrol. But this didn’t happen that often, as it wasn’t very safe for the US Army to patrol in our area.

  We passed our time by sitting on the roof of the warehouse, counting the clouds of smoke from explosions around the city or by trying to identify where the shooting was coming from. We also tried to sleep a lot and played many games of chess. Other than me, there were a couple of strong characters in the team, including a couple of Bosnians who spoke very little English, which was fun, especially as I thrashed them time and time again at chess. There were also a couple of French ex-soldiers, which was good, as we could have one or two decent conversations.

  After many sleepless, nervous nights, the instruction came for us to escort all the votes back to the relative safety of the airport, where they would be guarded by military personnel and counted. The trucks for the votes were escorted to us at the warehouse by another close protection team, and we guarded them with our weapons at the ready, as they were being loaded with the containers of votes we had protected with our lives. The Iraqi forklift operators were completely useless and kept bashing into the boxes we had carefully guarded. I lost my patience, kicked one of them off and loaded many of the crates myself. I felt like shooting the bloke in question, but that might have been a little extreme.