by Andy McNab
"Mark, you can sort out the food and jerricans."
The Kiwi would draw eight men's rations for fourteen days from Stores.
You strip it all down, and keep just one set of brew kit in your belt kit. I throw away the toilet paper because in the field I shit by squatting and therefore don't need it. But everybody keeps the plastic bags for shitting into. You simply tie a knot in them after use and put the contents into your bergen.
Everything must go with you, as nothing can be left to compromise your position, old or present. If you just buried shit it would create animal interest, and if discovered the ingredients could be analyzed.
Rice content, for example, would indicate Iraqis; currants or chili would point to Westerners.
There's always a lot of banter to swap menus. The unwritten rule is that whatever you don't want you throw into a bin liner for the other blokes to sort through. Stan didn't like Lancashire hot pot but loved steak and vegetables, so unbeknownst to him we swapped the contents. He would go over the border with fourteen days' worth of his least favorite meal. It was just a stitch; once we were out there we would swap around.
We still needed cam nets to conceal ourselves and our kit.
"I'll do it," Dinger volunteered.
He would cut rolls of hessian into six-by six-foot squares. Brand-new hessian needs to be messed up with engine oil. You put the hessian into a puddle of it and rub it in well with a broom. Then you turn it over and put it in the mud and rub it all in. Give it a good shake, let it dry, and Bob's your uncle-your very own cam net.
"Everything to be done by 1000 tomorrow," I concluded.
We would check and test, check and test. This wouldn't prevent things going wrong or not working, but it would at least cut down the odds.
It was about 2230, and Dinger announced that he had just run out of fags.
I got the hint. We'd covered everything and to carry on would just be reinventing the wheel. As the blokes left, they put every scrap of paper into a burn bag to be destroyed.
Vince and I stayed behind. We still had to go into the Phases (outline plan) with the squadron OC and sergeant major. They would hit us with a lot of questions of the "what if?" variety, and their different track of thinking might put a new angle on things. With luck, they might even approve the plan.
4
I couldn't sleep because my mind was going at a hundred miles an hour.
It was people's lives I was playing with here, my own included. The squadron OC had given the plan his approval, but that didn't stop me wondering if there was a better way of going about it. Were other people just nodding and agreeing with what I said? Probably not, since they all had a vested interest in our success and they were outspoken individuals. Was there anything I'd left out or forgotten? But you reach the point where you have to press on regardless. You could spend the rest of your life thinking about the different options.
I got up and made a brew. Legs had just finished sorting out the signals kit, and he came over and joined me. There was no sign of Stan or Dinger. Those two could sleep on a chicken's lip.
"The signals Head Shed have just given me our call sign," Legs said.
"It's Bravo Two Zero. Sounds good to me."
We had a bit of a chat about possible shortages. As I watched him head back to his bed, I wondered if he was thinking about home. He was a strong family man, with a second child that was just five months old. My mind drifted to Jilly. I hoped she wasn't getting upset by anything she was reading in the media.
There was the constant noise of kit being lugged and blokes mooching around sorting themselves out. I put my Walkman on and listened to Madness. I wasn't really listening because my mind was screaming in so many directions, but I must have nodded off at about three, because at six, when I woke, the lead singer had dropped two octaves and they were just about grinding to a halt.
It was quite a frenzy that morning. We checked that we still knew how to activate the distress signals on the small TACBE radios and use them one-to-one so we could actually talk line of sight on them.
Vince had collected the 5.56 ammunition for the Armalites and as many 40mm bombs for the grenade launchers as he could get his hands on. We had a lot of shortages on these bombs because the grenade launcher is such a formidable, excellent weapon. The bombs are quite a commodity; when you've got them, you hoard them. I explained the problem to a mate in A Squadron, and he poached about and got us some more.
All the 5.56 had to be put into magazines, and the magazines checked to make sure they were working. The magazines are as important as the weapon itself, because if the springs don't push the round into position, the working parts can't push the round into the breech. So you check and recheck all your mags, and then recheck them a third time.
The Armalite magazine normally takes 30 rounds, but many of us choose to put in just 29, which gives a little bit of extra push in the spring.
It's easier and quicker to put on a new mag than to clear a stoppage.
We checked the 203 bombs and explosives. PE4 doesn't smell and feels very much like plasticine. It's surprisingly inert. You can even light a stick of it and watch it burn like a frenzied candle. The only trouble with PE4 is that when it's cold, it's quite brittle and hard to mold into shapes. You have to make it pliable by working it in your hands.
We checked and rechecked all the detonators. The nonelectric ones that we'd be using for the compromise device are initiated by the safety fuse burning into them, and cannot be tested. Electric dets can be put on a circuit tester. If the electric circuit is going through the det, we can be sure that the electric pulse will set off the explosive inside and, in turn, detonate the charge. Fortunately, misfires are very rare.
It takes quite a while to test the timers. You have to set the time delay and check that it's working. If it works for one hour, it will work for forty-eight hours. Then you time the device and see if it is working correctly. In theory, if it is more than five seconds early or late, you exchange it for another. In practice, I bin any timer that I have doubts about.
The last item for testing was the wiring for the claymore antipersonnel mines, which was also done on a circuit tester.
We then ran through the rigging and de rigging of the little Elsie antipersonnel mines. For many of us it had been a while since we'd had our hands on this sort of kit. We made sure we could remember how to arm them and, more importantly, how to disarm them. There might be a situation where we'd lay the explosive and Elsie mines on target, but for some reason have to go in and extract them. This makes life more difficult when you're placing them, because not only do you have to keep a record of where they are on the ground, but also the person who sets the anti handling device should be the one to lift it.
There was a severe shortage of claymores, which was a problem because they are excellent for defense and. The solution was to go round to the cook house get a pile of ice-cream containers, and make our own. You make a hole in the center of the carton, run a det cord tail into it, and tie a knot inside the container. You make a shaped charge with PE4 and put it in the bottom of the tub, making sure that the knot is embedded. You then fill the carton with nuts and bolts, little lumps of metal, and anything else nasty you can find lying around, put on the lid, and wrap lots of masking tape around to seal it. Once the claymore is in position, all you have to do is put a det onto the det cord and Bob used to be your uncle.
Next, we sorted out the weapons, starring with a trip down to the range to "zero" the sights. You lie down in the prone position, aim at the same place on a target 300 feet away, and fire five rounds. This is then called a group. You look where the group has landed on the target and then adjust the sights so that the next group will land where you want it to-which is where you are aiming. If you do not zero and the group is, say, 4 inches to the right of where you are aiming at 300 feet, then at 600 feet it will be 8 inches to the right, and so on. At 1200 feet you could easily miss a target altogether.
One indivi
dual's zero will be different from another's because of many factors. Some are physical size and "eye relief"-the distance between the eye of the firer and the rear sight. If you used another person's weapon the zero could be off for you. This is not a problem at short ranges of up to 900 feet, but at greater distances it could be a problem. If this was the case and you could see where the rounds were going, you could "aim off" to adjust.
We spent a whole morning down at the range-first to zero the weapons, and second to test all the magazines. I was going to take ten magazines with me on the patrol, a total of 290 rounds, and every magazine had to be tested. I would also be carrying a box of 200 rounds for a Minimi, which takes the same round as the Armalite and can be either belt- or magazine-fed.
We also fired some practice 203 bombs, which throw out a chalk puff when they land to help you see if you've got to aim higher or lower-it's a crude form of zero.
We rehearsed for many different scenarios. The situation on the ground can change very rapidly, and you have to expect everything to be rather fluid. The more you practice, the more flexible you can be. We call this stage of planning and preparation "walk through, talk through," and operate a Chinese parliament while we're doing it. Everybody, regardless of rank, has the right to contribute his own ideas and rip to shreds those of others.
We practiced various kinds of LUP because we weren't sure of the lie of the ground. The terrain might be as flat as a pancake, in which case we'd LUP in two groups of four that gave each other mutual support. We discussed the way we would communicate between the two groups-whether it would be by com ms cord, which is simply a stretch of string that can be pulled in the event of a major drama, or by field telephone, a small handset attached to a piece of two flex D10 wire running along to the next position. In case we decided to go ahead with the landline, we practiced running the D10 out and how we were actually going to speak.
Legs went off and came back with a pair of electronic field telephones that even he wasn't familiar with. They had been running from one office to another between Portakabins before he nicked them. We sat with them like children with a new Fisher-Price toy, pressing this, pushing that. "What's this do then? What if I push this?"
The priority when filling a bergen is "equipment to task"-in our case, ordnance and equipment that could help us to place or deliver that ordnance. Next came the essentials to enable you to survive-water and food, trauma-management equipment, and, for this op, NBC protection.
The equipment in our berg ens was what we would need on the ground to operate. However, radio batteries run down and, along with many other things, would have to be replaced during our two weeks of being self-sufficient. Therefore more equipment had to be taken along and cached, simply to resupply the berg ens This was what was in the jerricans and two sandbags, one containing more NEC kit, the other more food plus any batteries and odds and sods.
It added up to an awesome weight of kit. Vince was in charge of distribution. Different types of equipment have to be evenly placed in the patrol. If all the explosives were placed in one bergen and that was lost, for whatever reason, we would then lose our attack capability using explosives. In the Falklands, the task force's entire supply of Mars bars was sent on one ship, and everybody was flapping in case it sank. They should have got Vince to organize it. Besides the tactical considerations behind equal distribution, people want and expect equal loads, whether they're 5'2" or 6'3". We have a scale that weighs up to 200 Lb, and it showed that we were carrying 154 Lb per man in our berg ens and belt kit. On top of that we had a 5gallon jerrican of water each-another 40 Lb. We carried our NEC kit and cache rations, which weighed yet another 15 Lb, in two sandbags that had been tied together to form saddlebags that could go around our necks or over our shoulders.
The total weight per man was therefore 209 Lb, the weight of a 15-stone man. Everybody packed their equipment the way they wanted. There's no set way of doing this, as long as you've got it and can use it. The only "must" was the patrol radio, which always goes on top of the signaler's bergen so that it can be retrieved by anybody in a contact.
Belt kit consists of ammunition and basic survival requisites-water, food, and trauma-care equipment, plus personal goodies. For this op we would also take TACBEs in our belt kit, plus cam netting to provide cover if we couldn't find any natural, and digging tools to unearth the cables if necessary. Your belt kit should never come off you, but if it does it must never be more than an arm's length away. At night you must always have physical contact with it. If it's off, you sleep on top of it. The same goes for your weapon.
The best method of moving the equipment proved to be a shuttle service in two groups of four, with four giving the protection, four doing the humping, and then changing around. It was hard work, and I didn't look forward to the 12 mile tab that first night-or maybe two-from the heli drop-off to the MSR. We certainly wouldn't practice carrying it now: that would be a bit like practicing being wet, cold, and hungry, which wouldn't achieve anything.
We did practice getting off the aircraft, and the actions we would carry out if there was a compromise as it was happening or the heli was leaving.
Everything now was task-oriented. If you weren't physically doing something to prepare for it, you were thinking about it. As we "walked through, talked through," I could see the concentration etched on everybody's face.
We were getting centrally fed, and the cooks were sweating their butts off for us. Most of the Regiment had already disappeared on tasks, but there were enough blokes left to pack the cook house and slag each other off. The boys in A Squadron had given themselves the most outrageous crew cuts right down to the bone. They had suntanned faces in front and sparkly white domes behind. Some of them were the real Mr. Guccis, the lounge lizards downtown of a Friday, and there they were with the world's worst haircuts, no doubt desperately praying the war was going to last long enough for it to grow again.
Because a lot of Regiment administration was also being run centrally, I kept bumping into people that I hadn't seen for a long time. You'd give them a good slagging, see what reading material they had, then nick it. It was a really nice time.
People were more sociable than usual, probably because we were out of the way, there were no distractions, just the job at hand. Everybody was euphoric. Not since the Second World War and the days of David Stirling had there been so much of the Regiment together at any one time in one theater.
We had some very nasty injections at one stage against one of the biological warfare agents it was thought Saddam Hussein might use. The theory was that you got one injection, then waited a couple of days and went back for another, but the majority of us were out of the game after the first jab. It was horrendous: our arms came up like balloons, so we didn't go back.
We were told on the 18th that we were going to move forward to another location, an airfield, from where we would mount our operations. We sorted out our personal kit so that if it had to be sent to our next of kin anything upsetting or pornographic had been removed. This would be done by the blokes in the squadron as well, to make sure your rubber fetish was never made public. To make less drama for your family you usually put military kit in one bag and personal effects in another. We labeled it and handed it in to the squadron quartermaster sergeant.
We flew out from the operating base on a C130 that was packed with pinkies and mountains of kit. It was tactical, low-level flying, even though we were still in Saudi airspace. There was too much noise for talking. I put on a pair of ear defenders and got my head down. It was pitch-dark when we landed at the large Coalition airbase and started to unload the kit. Noise was constant and earsplitting. Aircraft of all types took off and landed on the brightly lit runway-everything from spotter aircraft to A10 Thunderbolts.
We were much closer to the Iraqi border here, and I noticed that it was much chillier than we had been used to. You definitely needed a jumper or smock to keep yourself warm, even with the work of unloading. We laid out our sleepin
g bags on the grass under the palm trees and got a brew going from our belt kit. I was lying on my back looking up at the stars when I heard a noise that started as low, distant thunder and then grew until it filled the sky. Wave after wave of what looked like B52s were passing overhead enroute to Iraq. Everywhere you looked there were bombers. It could have been a scene from a Second World War recruitment poster. Tankers brought out their lines and jets moved in to fill up.
The sky roared for five or six minutes. Such mighty, heart-stirring air power dominating the heavens-and down below on the grass, a bunch of dickheads brewing up. We had been self contained and self-obsessed, seeing nothing of the war but our own preparations. Now it hit home: the Gulf War was not just a small number of men on a task; this was something fucking outrageously major. And bar one more refuel, we were within striking distance of adding to the mayhem.
Just before first light Klaxons started wailing, and people ran in all directions. None of us had a clue what was going on, and we stayed put in our sleeping bags.
"Get in the shelter!" somebody yelled, but it was too warm where we were. Nobody budged, and quite rightly so. If somebody wanted us to know what was going on, they'd come and tell us. Eventually somebody shouted, "Scud!" and we jumped. We'd just about got to our feet when the order came to stand down.
Every hour on the hour during the day, somebody would tune in to the BBC World Service. At certain times you'd hear the signature tune of the Archers as well. When you're away there's always somebody who's listening to the everyday tale of country folk, even if they will not admit it.
We were told we were going in that night. It was quite a relief. We'd got to the airfield with only what we stood up in.
In the afternoon I gave a formal set of orders. Everybody who was involved in the task was present-all members of the patrol; the squadron OC; the OPS officer who oversees all the squadron's operations.