by Andy McNab
I was about a half mile south of the Euphrates and a half mile north of a town. The area was irrigated by diesel pumps at intervals along the river. The field crops were about eighteen inches high. I had kept off the tracks and moved through the center of the fields, putting my feet down on the root mounds of the plants. Even so, I knew I couldn't avoid leaving sign. My hope was that no one would be out in the fields the next day, tending what, apart from the frost, seemed to be a healthy young crop.
I was feeling very positive. I'd survived the contacts, and that was all that seemed to matter. The last contact was like a big barrier that I'd got over and got away from, and now I was a free spirit.
In many ways this was the most dangerous time. Probably since caveman times, people have been cautious when they plan an operation, aggressive when they execute it, and most open to error when it's finished and they're on the home straight. That's when people start to get slack and the major dramas occur. It's not over yet, I kept saying to myself-it's so near but also it's so bloody far.
Adrenaline during the contacts and the constant roller coaster of the night's events had blocked the pain signals from reaching my brain. A soldier of the Black Watch during the First World War was shot four times and still kept charging forwards. When he finally took the position and had time to assess his injuries, he keeled over. You don't realize what's been happening to your body because your mind blanks it out. Now I'd calmed down a bit and the future was looking rosy, I was starting to realize how physically impaired I was. All the aches and pains of the last couple of days suddenly started coming through. I was covered with cuts and bruises. In contacts you're jumping and leaping around, and your body's taking knocks all the time. You don't notice them at the time. There were deep pressure-cuts on my hands, knees, and elbows, and painful bruising on the sides of both my legs. I had scratches and scrapes from thorn bushes and gashes from wire; the sting of them added to the ambient pain level. We'd tabbed close to 125 miles over hard bedrock and shale, and the leather was starting to fall off my boots. My feet were in a bad way. They were soaking wet and felt like blocks of ice. I just about had some sensation left in my toes. My clothing was ripped and torn, and my hands were covered with thick grease and grime, as if I'd been working on an engine for the last couple of days. My body was covered in mud, and as I walked along it was slowly drying out. Trickles of sweat fell down my back, and big clammy patches formed between my legs and under my armpits. My extremities were frozen, but at least my trunk was warm because I was moving.
It was still very cold. The mud had a film of ice over the top. The first foot or so of any large pool of water was frozen solid. It was a beautiful crystal night. The stars were glittering, and had it been anywhere else in the world, you'd have gone out and marveled at it. But the clearness of the sky meant there were no clouds to obscure the full moon in the west, and no wind to disperse the noise.
Scattered here and there were little outhouses, some with a light on, some with a generator going. I could see lights from the town to the south. Dogs barked; I skirted around buildings, hoping that nobody would pay attention to them.
Car lights in the distance made me flap. Were they part of the follow-up? Were they going to start searching the fields now? It wasn't a very good place for me to be. There was only half an hour of darkness left-not enough for me to get around the town or even go straight through it and get into the curls on the other side.
As the lights gradually faded I made a quick appreciation. Like the old Clash song, should I go or should I stay? Did I hide up or did I go for the border and try to get over before first light? What were the chances of the Iraqis following up during the day? There certainly hadn't been any follow-up so far. Perhaps they thought I'd already crossed the border and was away.
The houses looked so inviting. Should I get into one of these small buildings where you've just got the old boy and his fire and stay there with him for the day? I'd have shelter, and the possibility of food and water -and in theory a better chance of being concealed. But you never use isolated or obvious cover. It's a natural draw point for any hunter force. In films you see all these characters living in hay barns. It's pure and utter fantasy. If you're there they'll find you. None of this hiding under a straw bale business, just narrowly being missed by a probing bayonet.
My best chance was in the open but concealed, preferably from the ground and air. I had to assume the worst scenario, which was that the Iraqis would have spotter aircraft up. I found a drainage ditch that was about 3 feet wide and 18 inches deep, with water coursing through under gravity. I got in and moved along, pleased not to be leaving sign in the muddy water. The water was moving from east to west, my direction of travel.
I looked at my watch, checking off the minutes till daybreak. I stopped every few feet and looked around, listening, planning the next movement, planning my actions on: What if the enemy moved in from the front? What if I had a contact from the left? I remembered the ground I'd been over and planned the best escape route in each contingency.
After 900 or 1,200 feet I saw a dark shape ahead. It was either a small dam or. a natural culvert. When I got closer, I saw that a track running north-south from the Euphrates to the built-up area had a steel plate over it as a makeshift bridge, the sort of thing you see at roadworks in the UK. It was just coming up to first light. I had to make a decision. I could go further along the ditch and hope to find something better, or I could just stay put. On balance, I thought I was better off where I was.
The only problem with the culvert was that when you look at things in the dark and under pressure, they can look pretty good, but in the daytime the picture can be totally different. You have to be so careful choosing an LUP at night in an area that is virgin to you. When I was in the battalion at Tidworth we had mirror image barracks, the Green Jackets in one, the Light Infantry in the other. One night, I came back from town with a bag of chips and curry sauce, pissed as a fart. I stumbled into my room, dropped my trousers, and got into bed. Sitting up eating my chips with my head spinning and the bedside light on, I couldn't understand it when a bloke called out, "Turn the light off, Geordie." I looked up and saw a Debbie Harry poster, and I didn't like Debbie Harry. "Who the fuck's that over there then?" the voice demanded, but by then I had realized what I'd done. I abandoned my chips, grabbed my trousers, and ran for my life from the Light Infantry barracks.
I belly crawled under the steel span. The culvert wasn't as deep as the drainage ditch itself because it hadn't been cleared, but the prospect of resting my limbs far outweighed the discomfort of lying in the cold mud.
I retrieved the map cover from the pocket on my leg and tried to use it as some sort of insulation, but to no avail. My mind strayed to food. I might be needing it later on, but then again I might be captured. It was better to get it down my neck than to have it taken away. I pulled my last sachet-steak and onions-from the pouch on my belt kit and ripped it open. I ate with my fingers and stuck my tongue into the recesses for the last of the cold, slimy gunge. For pudding, I put my lips to the level of the water and sucked up a few mouthfuls. I got the map on top of me, ready to look at when there was enough light, and just lay back and waited.
As dark turned to light, I heard trucks in the distance and isolated bits of hollering and shouting, but nothing near enough to cause alarm.
It was almost peaceful. I started to shiver, and the trembling became uncontrollable. My teeth chattered. I took a deep breath and tensed all my muscles as tightly as I could. I stayed like that for two hours.
I had my fighting knife in my hand and my watch out on my chest so I didn't have to keep moving my hands. I studied the map to make an appreciation of where I was. If I had to leg it the last thing I wanted to do was map-read. I wanted to know that, as I came out, to my left would be the built-up area, to my right would be the Euphrates, and that I had however many miles to run to the border. I wanted to store as much information in my head as I could.
I we
nt through different scenarios, fantasies really. What if I was already in Syria? I knew I hadn't crossed the border: the two countries were at war; there had to be some physical barrier between them, but that didn't stop me daydreaming.
It must have been about eight o'clock when I heard the scuffle of goats' hooves coming from the direction of the town. I tensed. We hadn't had the world's best luck with goats on this trip.
I didn't hear the goat herder until he was right on top of the metal plate. I took a deep breath, a really deep breath. Straining my neck, I saw the ends of two sandals and a set of big, splayed toes. One foot came down into the mud. I gripped my fighting knife. I wouldn't do anything until he put his head down and actually saw me, and even then I didn't know what I was going to do. Did I just bring the left hand up and stick him one in the face? If he started running, what then? I could tell by the big choggie, splayed feet that he wasn't military, so hopefully he wasn't armed.
He stooped to pick up a small cardboard box I hadn't noticed in the ditch. It was a discarded ammunition box for 7.62 short, the round that AKs fire. He disappeared from view. The box landed back in the water.
He must have looked at it and decided it was of no use.
A couple of goats came and stood on the bank. I didn't want to breathe, I didn't want to blink. The goat herder made his way back on to the bridge and stood with his toes dangling over the edge of the steel. He coughed up a massive grolly out of the back of his neck and flobbed it into the water. It drifted down to me like a slimy green jellyfish and lodged itself in my hair. I was in such a mess anyway that it shouldn't have bothered me, but it did.
I was sure that one of the goats would get into the water and make the old boy come and rescue him, but nothing happened. The goats all trundled over, and the goat herder followed. I started to scrape the slime out of my hair.
I lay listening to noises. Looking out from my tomb, I could see that it was a crisp winter's morning with not a cloud in the sky. It was a view of the countryside, not at all a desert scene. All it needed was cows, and it could have been the fields around Hereford. There's a small footpath which follows the banks of the River Wye, and from a certain point you can look over to the other side at a dairy which has its own cows. Kate used to love being taken there. It looked nothing at all like the scene I was looking at now, but I imagined cows mooing and the sound of Kate giggling. The sun was out, but I was out of range of its warming rays. I felt like a lizard stuck where I was. It would be so nice to be out in the open, warming the bones.
I could hear vehicles in the distance-the springy, old me tally jangly sounds of them trundling along. Kids and older people hollered and shrieked. I was desperate to know what was going on out there. Were they looking for me? Or were they just going about their normal business? In one way it concerned me greatly that people were in the vicinity, but in another it just sounded nice and comforting to hear human voices because it meant I wasn't alone. I was cold and exhausted.
It was good to have some kind of reassurance that I was on earth, not Zanussi.
Sometimes a vehicle would come nearer and nearer and nearer, and my heart would start skipping beats.
Are they going to stop?
Don't be so stupid-no drama, they're going to the river.
They must be looking.
But not intensively-it's too near the border.
The noises were scary. By the time they got to me my mind had magnified them a hundred times. I flapped about the kids being curious. Kids must play. Did they play in the water? Did they play with the goats?
What did they do? A kid is shorter than an adult and would get a better perspective when looking at the culvert. Instead of seeing daylight a kid was going to see my head or my feet, and he wouldn't need to have passed his eleven plus to know that he should raise the alarm.
I wanted so much not to get caught. Not now. Not after so much.
I kept looking at the watch lying on my chest. I looked once and it was one o'clock. Half an hour later I checked again. It was five past.
Time was dragging, but I started to feel better about my predicament.
There had been vehicles, goats, and goatherds, and I'd got away with it.
I was still trying to memorize the map, going through the routes in my mind. I was gagging for last light.
There was a deafening rattle of steel as a group of vehicles thundered across. This time they stopped.
You're compromised: what did they stop for? You're in the shit.
No worries, they're picking somebody up. Just keep remarkably still, control your breathing.
I tried hard to think positively, as if that would stop them coming and finding me.
7.62 is a big-caliber round. The sound of over a hundred of them reverberating on the steel plate just a fraction of an inch from my nose was the worst thing I'd ever heard. I curled up and silently screamed.
Fuck! fuck! fuck! fuck! fuck!
Men bellowed at the tops of their voices. They fired all around the drainage ditch. The mud erupted. I felt the tremors. I curled up even tighter and hoped nothing was going to hit. The cracks, thuds, and shouts seemed never-ending.
The firing stopped but the shouting continued. What were they going to do now-just stick a weapon underneath and blow me away, or what?
I was shitting myself. I didn't know what they wanted me to do. I couldn't understand what they were screaming. Did they want to capture me? Did they want to kill me? Were they going to throw a grenade in?
Fuck it, I thought, if they want me out, they'll have to drag me out.
I was going to die in a drainage ditch two and a half miles from the border, of that I had no doubt. My nose was more or less touching the underside of the steel plate. I was stretching my neck, but I couldn't see much because of the perspective.
The muzzle of a rifle came down. Then a bloke's face. When he saw me there was a look of total and utter surprise. He did a little jump back and shouted.
The next thing I saw was a mass of boots jumping down all around the drainage ditch itself. Three blokes at either end, yelling their heads off. They motioned for me to get out.
No fucking way!
They wanted to see my hands. I was lying on my back with my feet and hands out straight. Two blokes grabbed a boot each and heaved.
I came out on my back and had my first view of Syria in the daylight. It looked the most beautiful country on earth. I could see the mast on the higher ground, tantalizingly close. I could almost have reached out and touched it. I felt burgled or mugged-the feeling of disbelief that this was happening to me at all, mixed with outrage that I was being robbed of something that was rightfully mine.
Why me? All my life I've been lucky. I've been in dramas that I've had no control of, and I've been in problems that I've created myself. But I've always been lucky enough to get out of them reasonably unscathed.
They gave a couple of kicks and motioned for me to get to my feet. I stood up straight, my hands up in the air, staring straight ahead. Nice blue sky it was, absolutely splendid. I turned my back on Syria and looked at the ploughed fields and green vegetation, and all the huts and tracks that I'd avoided during the night.
So much effort wasted. So few hours of daylight left.
They held their weapons nervously and jumped up and down, making weird warbling noises like Red Indians. They were as frightened as I was.
They fired into the air on automatic, and I thought, Here we go, all I need is for one of these rounds to come down and slot me through the head.
Two Land Cruisers were parked to the right-hand side of the bridge.
Three characters were pacing around on the steel plate; eight or nine others were charging around on the banks of the ditch.
The countryside looked even more European than I had imagined. I was pissed off with myself. To be picked up in featureless desert would have been bad luck, but to be captured like this on ground that could have been in northwest Europe was bloody bad management.
The squad dies were all over the place, gibbering and gab bering still very wary. Now that they'd got me they were not too sure what to do with me. It seemed there were more chiefs than Indians; everybody wanted to give orders. There must have been some sort of reward coming their way. I stood motionless in the mud, a pathetic mess. I stared straight ahead, no smile of appeasement, no grim scowl of defrance, no hint of eye contact. My training had taken over. Already I was trying to be the gray man.
They started firing into the ground. They were in an unbelievable frenzy. It seemed wrong to me that I was going to get shot by accident rather than doing a job or in a contact with me firing back. Nothing death or glory about it: I just didn't want to die because some trigger-happy dickhead was going hyper. Or worse, get severely injured.
But there's no way you show them that you're scared in a situation like that; you just stand there, take a deep breath, close your eyes, and let them get on with it.
The firing stopped after about fifteen seconds. One of the soldiers jumped down into the culvert and started rooting around for my kit. He came back with the map, which was unmarked, the belt kit, and the fighting knife. He brandished the blade in front of me and did the old throat-cutting motion. I thought, it's going to be one of them days.
One of the other soldiers was poking me with his weapon and gesturing for me to get down on my knees.
Is he going to kill me? Is it time to die now?
I couldn't think of any other reason why I'd get put on my knees. If they were taking me away, they'd drag me away or motion me somewhere.
So do I get down and wait for the possibility of getting shot, or do I make a run for it?
I wouldn't get far. I'd be killed within five steps. I knelt down in the water and thick mud.
The bottom of the drainage ditch was about 18 inches lower than the level of the fields, so when I finally got down I was more or less at face level with the steel plate. I looked up.