Having decided this, I went outside, and was studying the relay building through my ordinary night glasses when Des and Ken came back. I asked for an immediate report on what they had seen.
‘Well, apart from the bunker which we know about on the right, there is another, identical one, on the left,’ said Des. ‘The end of the berm is obscuring our view from here but it’s about fifty metres west of the road junction, on the far side of the main supply route.’
As ‘Spence’ might have said, this was getting serious. I hadn’t catered for having to take out two bunkers in my revised plan. After a moment’s thought I asked Des and Ken, ‘If we set up a team in front of the relay block on this side of the road will they be able to take out the left-hand bunker with a LAW 80?’
Both men nodded enthusiastically. ‘Sure thing, Billy,’ said Des. Ken chipped in with, ‘Perfect – that’ll make their eyes water.’ It would, too. The LAW 80 is a single-shot, rocket-propelled anti-tank weapon with a discardable launcher tube. It packs a tremendous wallop and has the advantage of being man portable; it is not guided, however, so the firer has to get close enough to be sure of his aim.
‘But there are also two vehicles that need to be covered,’ Des added. ‘They’re military-type trucks, three-tonners with canvas backs. They’re sitting on the other side of the road right in front of the target.’
‘Anybody in them?’ I asked.
‘Don’t know. We couldn’t see from where we were. But there could be.’
Having registered this as yet another potential problem, I looked at my watch. It was already more than half an hour since I had sent Mugger back for the others and I still couldn’t hear the vehicles. Where the hell were they?
Five minutes later I heard footsteps, then made out the dark shapes of men coming towards us. The three of us knelt by the bunker entrance and slipped the safety catches off our M16s. The adrenalin surged through my body like a shot from a hypodermic and all my senses went on full alert. I wasn’t expecting the enemy to approach from this direction but you could never be sure – or too careful.
Then I heard Mugger’s voice calling me in a loud whisper and lowered my weapon. In a few more strides he was standing in front of me with Pat beside him.
‘Where are the vehicles?’ I asked.
‘We could see a big enemy bunker down near the target and thought it might be risky to bring the wagons any closer,’ said Pat.
I could hardly believe it; indeed, for a moment I couldn’t speak. Then, turning to look at him, I said in cold fury, ‘I’ve told you before what I think of opinions. Just take as many guys as it needs and get back up there and bring those vehicles down here as I ordered. Every minute you waste puts the moon higher in the sky and turns more of a spotlight on the target area.’ I paused, then added, ‘And that means putting everybody’s life at risk.’
I had my temper under control, but it was still perfectly clear to them all that I was furious. I believe my anger was justified, however. Some of these characters were acting so cautiously that they were putting all of us in danger, although they didn’t realize it. Without the vehicles, our firepower was massively reduced, and the further away the Land Rovers were from the target the less effective the supporting fire they could give. At the same time I also had no doubt that some of the men were muttering to themselves that I had suicidal tendencies, that I was completely off my rocker and was going to get us all wiped out. Well, let them think it. This mission was going ahead as planned.
Eventually – after a further, wasted, twenty minutes – the Land Rovers arrived and I told all the guys to get their kit and gather round in a loose circle. I still only knew a few of them by name, so when it came to detailing them off for the various tasks ahead I had to rely on Pat to pick out most of the bodies I needed.
When they’d assembled I issued confirmatory orders. ‘There are two vehicles parked across from the target,’ I told them. If I’d never had their attention before, I had it in full measure now. ‘I want four men to go forward and cover those, and another two to go to the same spot with a LAW 80 to take out the enemy bunker beyond the end of the berm on our left. I also want a Land Rover fitted with a Milan to be positioned just on the road over here’ – I pointed to a spot thirty metres away to our right – ‘to take out the main bunker on the right of the target.’
Because of the extra potential trouble spots identified by Des and Ken, I had already accepted that I would have to cut down on the strength of the main assault team. I tasked three members of my original team, plus Major Peter, to the specific areas I had just indicated – two to the left-hand bunker, two to the vehicles – and waited while Pat selected the other men who were needed for particular tasks.
‘Four vehicles and those of you not selected by me or Pat will wait here as a reserve, ready to come forward if needed. Everyone else, apart from the Milan wagon and crew, will go forward with Pat in three of the wagons and set up a fire-support position at the end of the berm to the left of the road. From there you’ll be able to give covering fire if and when it becomes necessary.’
I looked at the camouflaged faces of the men sitting and kneeling around me.
I only recognized a handful of them in daylight. At night, now they had cam cream on their faces and most were wearing steel helmets, I could scarcely tell one from another. I wondered again how many of my dirty not-quite-three-dozen would be present at our debriefing in a few hours’ time. My plan wasn’t perfect, but no plan ever could be totally foolproof. Worse, I had had to adapt it as our recce produced more and more evidence that the intel we’d first received was, to put it mildly, over-optimistic. Nevertheless, I believed that it was the best I could come up with given the situation and our resources. We were about to find out whether I was right. Meanwhile, it was time to wind up the briefing.
‘Let’s keep it quiet for as long as possible,’ I told them. ‘I don’t want those bunkers being taken out unless it goes noisy – and preferably not until the first charges go off when we break through the outer wall. Then Pat and the rest of you can hit them with everything you’ve got and hope it either scares, confuses or occupies them enough so that we can get out without suffering too much damage.
‘Right guys. Any questions? Okay. Let’s go.’
And with that we moved out.
Chapter Twenty-One
I LED my demolition team and six other men off to the left, to make use of whatever shadow cover was available close to the berm, and then headed north towards the road junction and the final jumping-off point for the target.
Pat and his three Land Rovers drove along the same route after us. The crew of the wagon carrying the Milan, which only had thirty metres to travel, had been told to move into position ten minutes after the rest of us had left.
The demolitionists were Mugger and Ken and a quiet Yorkshire corporal named Tom. A tall guy, very fit and strong, it was he who had driven the Gaz containing the bodies of the three dead Iraqis back to where I was flown in, apparently prepared to put up with the corpses in exchange for having a closed vehicle with a heater. As backup there was myself, Des and Captain Timothy, the young officer who had joined us from the infantry. Each of us carried one of the explosive charges that had been made up back in the LUP. I had the shaped charge for the fence and Des the charge for the wall, while Timothy had the charges we would use to blow the doors in the bunker. In addition, each of us was carrying a powerful high-explosive charge with which we would take out the switching gear.
When we reached our jumping-off point we were just two hundred metres from the relay station. From there all we could see of the building was the wall around it and, behind it, the steel antenna soaring into the night sky. The wall seemed to be of concrete, grey in colour apart from one section, a few metres wide, which appeared to be a different shade. From that distance, however, even with the moonlight, we couldn’t make it out properly.
The six men who had moved forward with us – one of them with a LAW80
– had already broken away and crossed the road to come up on the two trucks. To the right and less than fifty metres beyond them was the large bunker, where I could easily make out the enemy coming and going. Even though it was late there seemed to be quite a lot of activity. About a hundred and fifty metres to our left the other bunker was now clearly visible. It too was brightly lit inside and had enemy personnel moving about. There were other, smaller buildings behind the left-hand bunker, and about a hundred metres beyond the target was the large military encampment that we had spotted during the recce.
‘A few more than the thirty guys we expected,’ breathed Des.
‘Yeah, but by the time they realize what’s going on we’ll be back at our LUP,’ I answered softly. ‘So let’s just brass it out and get it over with.’ I looked at the other five, then nodded. Time to go.
As we stepped out in single file, slightly crouched but moving fairly quickly, I could see to our left, where the low growl of the Land Rovers had died away, that Pat had the wagons parked a few metres apart and facing the different directions from where trouble might be expected to come. We pressed on, slinking over the MSR and past the right-hand bunker.
Whether the Iraqis in the right-hand bunker actually saw us or not I don’t know. But no one shouted or challenged us and in less than a minute we had reached the wall. Ken, whose job it was to blow this first obstacle, led the way, followed by Des, who was carrying the charges. Mugger, who would bring down the fence, was next, and then me with his charges. Behind me was Tom, who would blow the bunker’s main door, and Captain Timothy carrying his charges.
Close to, we could see straight away what made one section a different shade from the rest of the wall. It was plastic sheeting. An already dodgy mission was growing stranger by the minute.
‘Pull the stuff back and let’s see what’s behind it,’ I hissed. At once Ken and Des peeled back one edge, then Des turned and said, ‘The wall’s already been blown. There’s a bloody great hole here.’
‘Well, let’s get through it,’ I said. We were crouched down by the wall, but with the moonlight we would be immediately visible to anyone who looked hard enough from the trucks, the bunkers, or even the smaller buildings to our left. It felt as though we were standing in the spotlights on stage in a packed theatre.
Within thirty seconds all six of us were through the gap and had pushed the plastic sheeting back in place. Inside, there was total chaos. The place had obviously suffered a direct hit from an Allied bomb or missile. In places the fence was twisted and flattened, and in others completely torn from its cement base. Of the main bunker there was almost nothing left. There were buckled steel girders and shattered concrete everywhere. Some of the wreckage was so precariously balanced that it looked likely to crash down at any moment.
I took a look around for an entrance to the three underground rooms, but the stairway and the rooms had been completely buried beneath the rubble. The whole site was extremely hazardous, and I realized that one or more of us could get badly injured simply walking in the ruins, especially since the moonlight on the wreckage left large areas in deep shadow. It was perfectly certain, too, that there wasn’t any switching gear left for us to destroy. Curiously, I felt a sense of anti-climax. Still, there was one thing we could do.
‘Des, you and Timothy dump all your explosives here and get back to the gap in the wall and wait for us there. Now we’re here we’d better bring down the mast, if nothing else.’ Since the mast was still up, it could still receive and transmit signals via the antennae and dishes on it – which meant the site could still get Scuds off towards Israel. Thinking quickly, I offloaded my own explosives and told Mugger, ‘Let’s blow the mast and get out of here.’
‘These charges are not really suitable,’ he replied mournfully. ‘They’re no good for cutting steel.’
This was too much. First we had intelligence that told us the place was defended, if at all, by about thirty Iraqis. Then Intel had failed to tell us that there were a military camp and fortified defensive positions around the relay station. Meanwhile, somebody had neglected to tell us, or RHQ, that the site had already received an extremely accurate air or missile raid. Finally, having successfully reached our target unseen with more than a hundred pounds of explosive charges, we found that those charges probably would not do the one job that still needed doing. Well, we were bloody well going to do something, I thought.
‘Surely you can do something?’ I asked Mugger. He considered for a while, and finally nodded. ‘If we pack a charge and a third of the other explosives around each of three of the mast’s four legs, then it will give us about thirty-five pounds per leg. With luck that will do the job.’
‘Okay. Let’s do it,’ I said. ‘It sounds much too damned quiet out there for it to last.’ By now we had been almost in the centre of an enemy installation for ten or fifteen minutes. It seemed incredible that nobody had noticed us, but how much longer could we trust our luck to last? I had a strong suspicion that the answer was ‘not much’, but the demolitionists were already on the case. Mugger, Ken and Tom quickly divided the explosives into three piles, then each of them grabbed one pile and headed in a crouch for one of the steel legs of the mast.
I waited between two of the legs, aware that these three guys were playing with high explosives that could blow us all to atoms in a millisecond if anything went wrong. So while I hoped that they wouldn’t take too long, I also didn’t want them to be foolishly hasty.
Ken was the first to finish, then, thirty seconds later, Tom came over to join us.
‘What’s keeping Mugger?’ I asked.
‘He’s going to pull the three switches,’ Ken answered. By now we were scarcely bothering to lower our voices.
‘Right,’ I told them. ‘You two go and join Des and Timothy and all of you get through the wall and wait there. We’ll be right with you.’
A minute later Mugger appeared out of the darkness and gave me a big grin. ‘Okay Billy,’ he said. ‘They’re each on a two-minute delay, so let’s head for the great outdoors.’ He was, as usual, as cool as a cucumber and, like any artist, supremely happy in his work. I didn’t need any extra prompting, and we lit out for the wall like greyhounds.
At which point our good fortune took a nosedive. We were through the tangled fence and close to the gap in the wall when all hell broke loose. There were several single shots followed by a burst of automatic fire, then the enormous whoosh of a Milan going in and, seconds later, a huge explosion as the missile struck home. Then everyone seemed to let rip together. Rounds were zipping overhead and we could hear them smacking into the other side of the wall.
There were bullets flying everywhere, riddling the sheeting covering the gap while, above, tracers created amazing patterned arches. We were safe enough on our side of the wall, but not for long. Behind us, no more than ten metres away, was over a hundred pounds of high-explosive getting ready to blow in less than ninety seconds.
‘What do you reckon, Mugger?’ I asked.
‘We haven’t got much fucking choice, have we?’ he replied.
I grinned at him. ‘No. I suppose not. So let’s go.’ And with that I ducked round the plastic sheet and into the open area on the other side. The other four were all lying by the wall outside.
‘Line abreast and back to the jumping-off point,’ I yelled. ‘And let’s move it. It’s all going to blow in a few seconds.’
Surging forward, we spread out like the three-quarter line in a rugby game and belted towards the dark, looming mass of the north end of the berm. Though I swear that not even the finest line-up ever made it from one end of a rugby pitch to the other at the speed we travelled that night. Of course, we were all as fit as professional athletes, and given the amount of adrenalin fizzing around in our muscles we’d have been good for a few world records – if anyone could have spared the time to clock us.
We were halfway between the wall and the jumping-off point when the first explosive charge blew, followed seconds l
ater by another boom and, almost immediately afterwards, by a third.
None of us stopped to watch the effects, however, for there were bullets whistling all around us. As I ran I looked to the left. The bunker there was gushing flames and smoke from its gun slits and entrance, which meant the Milan had done its job.
The bunker on the other side was still intact, and there seemed to be a lot of the enemy fire coming from that direction. But Pat and his team on the 110s had the heavy machine-guns in action, while some of the guys with him had brought their grenade launchers to bear and were peppering the bunker with high-velocity fragmenting metal. As a result, most of the enemy fire was wild, since they were reluctant to face the streams of 0.5-inch rounds and 40mm grenades.
We ran to within a few metres of the Land Rovers’ position, and I yelled to the fire-support team that we were all through and evacuating the area. On we dashed. Suddenly we were at the north-south road and I could see dark shapes over to our right where the enemy trucks were parked. Our guys there were firing on groups of Iraqi troops who were taking cover at the sides of the ruined bunker and in a few small huts, or crouching behind low humps of sand and rock.
The enemy soldiers appeared to be using automatic rifles and light machine-guns, as well as standard magazine rifles – and there seemed to be a lot of them. My immediate impression, however, was that none of them was capable of shooting very straight. Not that it mattered. You could just as easily die from a lucky shot as from the perfect aim of a sniper.
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