by Andy McNab
Everybody's face lit up, mine included-even though football did nothing for me. When I was a kid, Millwall was the local team, but I only went to see them three or four times. I stood there like a dickhead on the terraces and wondered what all the fuss was about. I couldn't see a thing because I was too small, and all I knew was that it had cost loads of money to get in. I went on a Wednesday night once and left halfway through because it was so cold. That was the extent of my football knowledge, and that was all football did for me-it reminded me of wet, cold, windy terraces. I had no interest in it whatsoever, yet here I was, a prisoner of soccer-mad Iraqis, and it might be my lifeline.
"Liverpool!" he said.
"Chelsea!" I said.
"Manchester United!"
"Nottingham Forest!"
They laughed and I joined in, trying to form some sort of bond. This was good, textbook stuff, but I couldn't sustain it for much longer. My knowledge was just about exhausted.
"How long am I here?" I tried. "Do you know how long I'll be here? Can you give me any food?"
"No problems. Bobby Moore!"
I thought I'd try another ploy.
"Mai? Mai?" I asked for water. I coughed dryly and gave it the old puppy dog look.
A bloke went out and came back with a glass of water. I gulped it down and asked for more. That cheesed them off so I just thanked them again and decided to keep quiet for a while.
They were all in their late teens, growing their first wispy mustaches.
They behaved like young squad dies in any army, but what surprised me about them was the standard of maintenance of their uniforms and weapons. I had imagined the rag heads to be a bit of an undisciplined rabble, their kit dirty and shabby. But their uniforms were well laundered and pressed, and their boots were highly polished. Their weapons were in excellent order and well maintained. The buildings, too, were in a good state of repair, and spotlessly tidy. This was good; I felt that in their discipline lay some sort of protection for me. They were unlikely to do anything unless they were told to do it.
It made me feel a bit happier that they weren't just a bunch of head bangers rushing around wanting to kill and maim. Somebody, somewhere, made them clean their weapons; somebody, somewhere, made them clean their boots and their rooms.
What was more, there were obviously ways of striking up a relationship with these people, a fact which might help me at a later date. It was not just black and white in their eyes, as I was expecting it to be, with me the bad guy, them the good guys. There was this gray area of shared interest that we had already started to explore. So far, we had something in common in football. We were all talking and replying; it wasn't just me on the receiving end of rhetoric, abuse, and tactical questions. Relationships, however tenuous, can almost always be formed, and in the situation I was in this could only be good. I had engineered getting the water, and in that exchange I was doing the controlling.
Well, there was no harm being optimistic.
It went through my mind that maybe they were being friendly because it was all over now and the questioning was finished with. I was trying to think of all the optimistic things, but really you should be thinking of the pessimistic things, the worst-case scenarios, because then anything else is a bonus. At the end of the day they were just young lads.
Dinger and I were the new kids in town, the commodities they wanted to have a look at, the new toys, the white-eyed prisoners. They'd probably looked on Dinger and me with a bit of awe, something to tell the grandchildren about. And now they'd seen us, spoken to us, taken the piss out of us, they were bored. They started to look tired, probably from the warmth of the heater and the excitement of the day. They tucked their weapons under their beds and got their heads down.
My mind turned again to thoughts of escape. I couldn't get out of the handcuffs, and even if I could what was I going to do? Was I going to garofe them all and run away? Things like that just do not happen. It's a fantasy that comes out of films. Are you going to kill number one without number five hearing?
My hand was fixed to the wall. I wasn't going anywhere. There was nothing I could reach from where I was. I would have to wait for the next stage of transit or some other opportunity.
I was feeling a lot more at ease with my situation. I'd been caught, I'd gone through the initial drama, and now I was sitting in a warm room with people who weren't kicking the shit out of me. I wasn't going to be there for ever, but apart from the pain in my wrist, it was nice and relaxed. The people here didn't want to fill me in; they just wanted to talk about Gazza and Bobby Charlton. I had the hopeful thought-and even as I thought it I knew it was fruitless-that maybe this was the way ahead: that they were fed up with me and maybe I'd just be chucked in as one of Saddam's human shields.
As the night wore on, my arm and hand started to hurt quite badly. I tried to keep my mind off the pain by going through the escape scenarios again, doing my appreciations.
Out of the top of the window I could catch a little bit of the stars. It was a beautiful, clear night. I looked back at the sleeping jundies.
If I managed to get away, could I get to Dinger? Where was he? I was assuming that he was on the camp somewhere, but was he next door? I couldn't hear anything. Was he along the veranda? I came to the conclusion that I'd have to grab the opportunity if it came, but I couldn't leave without making the effort to get hold of him. I knew that he'd be thinking exactly the same, as any member of the patrol would. Was it worth waiting until we were together? No, I'd grab any opportunity that came along. So-what was the first thing I was going to do? How was I going to find out where he was? Was I going to look through the windows for him or was I going to shout? Would his guards be awake?
You've got to have a game plan and contingency plans. Hesitation is fatal. I would avoid being overt if possible-that's just another bit of madness from Hollywood. In the films they come at you one at a time so you can slot them neatly like ducks at a fun fair In real life everybody jumps in together and they kick you to pieces. It would have to be as covert as I could make it: just get out, get some firepower, get Dinger, get a vehicle. Easy! All that in an enclosed camp with troops, and me with maybe a 30-round magazine.
Once we were out we would just have to move west. On foot or in a vehicle? Crosscountry or through the town? The drive from the culvert to the camp had been very short: we were still close to Syria. Our next transit was bound to take us into more secure areas, further from the border.
I dozed off and woke in pain. My head was hurting, my body ached. I had to sort out the blood and snot in my nose.
I heard hooting in the distance and the sound of vehicles. The big corrugated iron gates were being kicked open. It was still dark. People were walking along the veranda outside, guided by Ully lamps. They were talking. I felt a stab of apprehension. What was happening now? I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself down. One of the guards woke up and gave the other two a kick. They got to their feet.
The five or six blokes who came into the room were strangers. I felt helpless, that little kid feeling you get when you know you're cornered by the rival gang. They towered above me in the shadows and flickers.
When my hand was released from the wall it was well past the pins and needles stage. It was swollen and completely numb. Two blokes held me either side and lifted me up. Somebody handed me my boots, but my feet were too swollen to put them on. I carried them the way an old granny carries her handbag, clenched to my chest. I wanted to keep them; I didn't want to spend the rest of my days without any footwear.
As they frog-marched me outside I played on the pain, moaning and groaning. I must have looked a right dickhead. The blokes did lots of mock "tut-tut tuts." One pulled a face of feigned concern and said,
"We're really worried about you."
The cold air hit me. It was a refreshing, bracing feeling, but I would have preferred to be back in Aunty's nice warm room. I started to shiver. It was a beautifully clear night. If we managed to get awa
y, we'd be able to navigate westwards very easily.
Nobody said where we were going. They dragged me along, and I had to take silly little steps because my feet weren't carrying me properly. We stopped by a Land Cruiser, and they shoved me into the back with my boots on my lap. They squeezed the ratchets of my handcuffs and tied a blindfold painfully tight.
I tried to lean forward to rest my head on the seat in front to relieve the pressure on my hands, but a hand on my face pushed me back upright.
The interior light shone through the blindfold. I could tell there were two in the front. The door slammed noisily and made me jump. I clenched my teeth, ready for a twat around the head.
I was sitting on the right. There was the sound of shuffling to my left, then I heard: "All right, mate, all right, mate."
Dinger was honking as he hit his head on the way in. This was really excellent news. I instantly felt happy, that wonderful feeling again of being in it together.
He was positioned with his knees pressing against mine.
"Can you help my hands?" I asked into the darkness.
I got hit around the back of the head, but it was worth it. I'd let Dinger know that I was there, and I'd learn that there was a guard in the back with us and that these people meant business.
The driver sounded like an officer. "You, no talking. Talking-boom boom!"
Fair one.
Every movement brought a retaliatory prod from the guard, but I couldn't avoid taking deep, sighing breaths because my hands were so painful.
The vehicle stank of the usual cigarettes and cheap cologne. I ran through an appreciation. This transit probably signified the end of the tactical phase. We were getting moved further down the chain. I had no idea whether it was going to get better or worse. The optimistic side was saying: Right, I'll just go to prison now. The professional side was saying: Let's wait and see. You don't know what's going on.
I tried to concentrate on keeping my orientation. We came out of the gate and turned left. That meant we were heading east, not west, so we weren't going in the direction of Syria. As if we would. He was driving like an idiot. Normally you'd consider it very handy to have a crash, but at the speed he was going we would all die in the wreckage.
I once saw a film of Houdini clasping his hands behind his back and stepping through them to bring them round to his front. I wondered if I would be able to do it with the injuries. Then I thought: You dickhead, you've never done it in your life anyway, what are you on about? But I would have turned myself into an elastic band if it had meant getting away. All I needed was an opportunity.
I felt incredibly tired because of the heater and the heavy cigarette smoke, but the pain in my hands kept me awake. As if to make sure we stayed awake, they put on a cassette of Arabic music. It was so loud that at first I didn't hear the bombs falling.
9
They must have been thousand-pounders. We heard several explosions; the area was getting severely hammered. The pressure waves hit us and the car rattled. The guards cursed. The vehicle stopped. I heard all the typical noises of disaster-the screeching of brakes, screams of pain and loss, shouts of panic and anger, a distressed woman crying, a child whimpering, metal scraping on stone. The driver and guards jumped out and cold air rushed over us. This could be our moment. The blokes had gone, the doors were open, but I could hear talking. I couldn't see what was going on. It was unbelievably frustrating. I had to piece things together purely by sound. Was the road bombed? Was it an obstruction? Had he stopped to help somebody? And more to the point, were they now going to come around and fill us in, purely because we were white eyes and they'd just been bombed? The thoughts raced through my mind, but before I even had time to speak to Dinger, the Iraqis got back in and we started moving again.
We drove for about an hour and a half. My sense of direction had gone to rat shit as soon as we'd come out of the camp and turned left, and I didn't have a clue where we might be. I was pissed off with myself again.
When we finally stopped, we could have been in Timbuktu for all I knew.
They dragged us out of the vehicle, and I was put back into what I sensed was the same room as before. I had the feeling the guards were still in bed. Somebody pushed me to the floor and handcuffed me to what I assumed was part of a bed. It was actually quite comfortable. I wasn't crunched up in the back of a vehicle, my knees weren't up around my ears, and my arm wasn't chained high up in the air. I sat cross-legged on the floor, trying to sort myself out, trying to tune in.
I sensed that I was facing the wall. I tried putting my head right back so I could see past the bridge of my nose. I couldn't see anything except a bit of the glow from the paraffin heater.
I sat there for an hour, the scenarios rushing around my head. We had definitely been going through a built-up center of population when the bombs fell. Was it Baghdad? Why take us to Baghdad? So that people could see us? To be part of a human shield? Would the Allies bomb a position where prisoners were? Damned right they would. Schwarzkopf would hardly stop the war effort because Dinger and Andy were held in a radar center. Who were we going to get handed over to? Would we make a video? I wouldn't mind. I wanted people to know that I was still alive.
I could hear two sources of slow, regular breathing. To test if they were asleep I leaned forward and rested my head on the bed. Nothing happened. I slid over onto my right side and got my head down on the carpet. Still nothing. I put pressure on the blindfold against the carpet and managed to slide it down a little. I was indeed back in the same room.
I tried to work out what had happened to the others. Were we the only two survivors? Would they say if people had got across the border? I didn't come up with any answers, but it was good mental exercise. I might have to be doing a lot of that. I was already pacing myself for a long capture. It would obviously be nice to get released as soon as the war was over, but I couldn't really see it at this stage. There would most likely be a hostage period to come after this, lasting perhaps a couple of years.
I thought back to the American POW. He had endured years in solitary, and everybody back home assumed he was dead. It was only because an exchange took place that the truth came out. There was a US sailor that the Viet Cong had taken for a bit of a bonehead and used for menial tasks like mopping up. He was released because he was just an able seaman of no consequence who had fallen overboard-the classic gray man.
In fact this character had taken it upon himself to remember the names, ranks, and numbers of over 200 prisoners. When he came back he reeled them all off. Our POW was among the names. It was a traumatic discovery for his family. I was trying to relate my experience to his, and there was no comparison. A year or so was bugger all. I'd only start worrying after two.
My hands were agony. I tried to work them out of the cuffs, but it was futile. They were far too swollen. I considered waking the guards up and asking to be released for a while, but they wouldn't have the keys -and they certainly wouldn't bother going and getting them.
My thoughts turned to Jilly. I wondered what she was doing.
Two hours later the boys came back with their Tiny lamps. Just as before, they undid my handcuffs and picked me up and dragged me back into the cold. It was a nice feeling on the body; I kidded myself I was about to start a long country walk or ski a good mountain.
Nobody talked. I hoped and prayed that Dinger was coming too, but I couldn't hear him. I was put in the same position at the back on the right-hand side, behind the seats, legs up around my head. This time I took the precaution of arching my back to make space for my sore hands, so that I wouldn't have to make the movement later on and earn myself a whack on the head.
"No talk or shoot," the driver said.
"Okay."
"Yeah, okay mate," said Dinger from beside me.
I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was as relieved to hear me as I was to hear him. But the relief was short-lived. Just as we were setting off, somebody leaned into the vehicle and said: "I hope
that Allah is with you."
I didn't know if it was said to spark me up, but if it was, it succeeded.
We got the same bad driver as before and were soon being flung around all over the place. There was no music this time, just small talk between the blokes in the front. Occasionally a window would go down as one of them snot ted up a grolly and gob bed it, or shouted a greeting at somebody in the darkness. We stopped on one occasion while the driver had a long conversation with somebody in the street. I got the impression he was showing us off. I heard giggles from two or three people outside the car, then hands came in and tugged our mustaches and slapped our faces. I clenched up. It pissed me off more than the kickings. That had been tactical questioning, and I could understand the reasons behind it. But these dickheads were having fun at my expense, pure and simple.
We drove on in silence. We were going further and further from the border, but I was just about past caring. I was too worried about my hands. They were swollen to nearly twice their normal size, and I had no sensation left in the fingers. I could feel nothing beyond the wrists, where the handcuffs had dug in so deeply that I was bleeding.
The pain was becoming unbearable. I feared that at this rate I was going to lose the use of my hands for ever.
I tried to think of the positives. At least I wasn't dead. It was now about twelve hours since my capture, and I was still alive.
I started to think about the patrol as a whole. What would the Iraqis know about us? I had to assume that they'd link us with the contact at the MSR. They would know how many of us there were, because they would have found eight berg ens They would have found the LUP as well, with the cache of water and food.
What would give us away in the berg ens Because of SOPs, I knew there wouldn't be any written details of codes or our tasking. What about the equipment? How would we get around the explosives, timing devices, and detonators? I'd say they were area protection devices-they would have found the claymores, which would add weight to my story. Perhaps they wouldn't even know what the timing devices were. And maybe the jundies would have been so busy looting the berg ens that all that kit would have disappeared anyway. I almost giggled when I imagined them rifling through the berg ens in darkness and sticking a finger straight through one of the plastic bags of shit.