Eye of the Storm

by Peter Ratcliffe

  Among the SAS men near the trucks I thought I could make out Major Peter in the group closest to us. I yelled, ‘Cease fire and retire with us back to the vehicles,’ meaning the four 110s we had left behind near the abandoned L-shaped bunker. We continued to run up the slight slope, parallel with the berm. When we reached them the wagons were all intact, including the one that had fired the Milan, which had rejoined the other three after taking out the bunker. Tracer and bullets were still flying everywhere, and back towards the target we could hear the roar of the Brownings, the lighter rattle of the GPMGs and the thump of the grenade launchers as Pat and his fire-support group continued to lay down a stream of heavy and accurate fire.

  As I reached the vehicles and turned around I found Major Peter jogging the last few paces towards us. ‘Some night,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’ But it was not until later, during our debriefing back at the LUP, that I learned what had turned our mission noisy, and Major Peter’s part in it.

  He and the three troopers who had been detailed to check out the enemy trucks with him were right alongside the vehicles as I and my team disappeared through the bunker wall. Crouched down, they waited with their weapons ready, occasionally scanning the scene through their Kite sights. Then, some ten minutes later the cab door of the leading truck had opened to reveal a bleary-eyed military driver who had almost certainly been asleep. Bleary or not, however, he spotted our guys and immediately made a grab for a rifle he had propped up on a seat next to him. It was the last thing he ever did. Reacting instantly, Major Peter levelled his M16 at the Iraqi’s chest and fired several rounds – the single shots we had heard as Mugger and I headed for the gap in the wall, just before automatic fire tore the night apart. The driver was probably dead before his hand touched his own weapon. Seconds later the enemy troops in the right-hand bunker opened fire and our man on the Milan decided that the moment had come for him to take it out. It was then that the whole shebang went very noisy.

  Apparently the shooting woke the driver of the second truck. He was more cautious than his colleague in the other vehicle, however, for he climbed down on the side away from our guys. He immediately spotted the trooper who was about to loose off the LAW 80 at the left-hand bunker and, with commendable courage, leapt on his back and started trying to strangle him. Luckily he was spotted by one of Major Peter’s unit, who rushed forward through a curtain of bullets and clubbed the Iraqi on the back of the head with his rifle butt.

  With its aluminium and plastic parts, the Colt M16 may be very light, but it is still solid enough to knock someone senseless if used in the right way. Our guys left the Iraqi where he fell, no doubt to crawl off later with a bad head. They could have shot him, but there was no point. He was unarmed and now out of the game, nor was he going to recover fast enough to cause us any further problem. It was the right decision. He was a brave man, and enough men were dying already that night.

  There was one serious consequence of his action, though, for it meant that the LAW missile was never fired at the second bunker. By the time the operator had it set up again on his shoulder, my team and I were belting back across the area in front of him and the risk of hitting one of us by accident was too great. That and my yelling at them to retire caused him to give up on his task and fall back after us.

  As Major Peter and the others joined us at the vehicles, I happened to glance up to the top of the berm, and saw about a dozen figures milling about up there. They seemed to be dressed in dark kit, rather than the normal olive drab of Iraqi soldiers. I yelled, ‘Who are those guys on top of the berm?’ and someone shouted back, ‘It’s okay, they’re the Iraqi truck drivers from the parking area.’ I assumed that the man who answered was one of those I had left with orders to guard the wagons and secure the area. I also assumed that they must have checked the top of the berm and dealt with anyone who might have been up there.

  It was now that I made what was potentially the most serious mistake of my life. I believed what I heard and relaxed. Seconds later the figures on the berm disappeared and I thought that, frightened by our presence and all the firing, they had made themselves scarce. I should have sent a patrol up there to cover us and make sure there was no danger from that quarter. After all, why would a group of Iraqis stand on top of a sandbank looking down at an armed enemy if they didn’t have to?

  The answer was not long in coming. The watchers on the berm can’t have had their weapons with them when we first saw them. They must have gone off to collect them, however, because a few minutes later we found ourselves taking a lot of incoming fire. In the space of a few seconds Mugger had two bullets through his clothing and I felt one whip by my head, just missing me. Some of the rounds were literally parting our hair, and one slammed into the Milan on my vehicle, wrecking the delicate firing mechanism. At first we couldn’t even tell where the firing was coming from; then, finally, we traced it to the top of the berm where we had seen the figures earlier.

  Once again luck was with us because the enemy firing down on us were obviously not Saddam’s crack Republican Guard. All they were doing was spraying rounds indiscriminately in our direction, although if they had taken time to aim and concentrate their fire they could have wiped us all out. We weren’t even under cover. None the less, once we realized where the danger lay we started to give it back in spades, with our M16s, medium and heavy machine-guns and grenade launchers pouring concentrated fire in their direction.

  Yet despite returning a heavy and accurate fire towards the Iraqi troops on the berm, the general consensus among our guys seemed to be to get out of there – fast. So much so, in fact, that without waiting for orders, several of them started firing up the motors and heading the wagons towards the south. As one of the last to leave fishtailed away in a skidding start, its front wing struck me a violent blow on my thigh and belt kit and sent me flying through the air. As I went in one direction my rifle, which had been knocked from my hand, went in another.

  Half winded, I staggered to my feet, and found the last of the four Land Rovers we’d left here revving up next to me. ‘Jump on or we’re fucking going without you,’ a voice yelled. It wasn’t much of an option, for bullets were ricocheting off the vehicle’s sides and bonnet. Someone grabbed my arm, and I scrambled aboard as the wagon lit out, with enemy bullets still pinging off the sideworks. My M16 – with twenty gold sovereigns still hidden in the butt – was left behind. I often wonder whether whoever found the weapon also discovered the secret hoard of gold. It would go a long way nowadays, given the present state of the Iraqi economy.

  As we bucked and bumped our way south the wild gunfire from the berm gradually died away, though I could still hear the sound of more distant firing. I hoped that most of it was coming from Pat and his fire-support group, and that they were already pulling back from their covering position. About a kilometre down the road our little convoy pulled over and stopped, and I jumped out of the Land Rover which had brought me that far. The sudden, almost panicky withdrawal had annoyed me, and as the men dismounted I called them together.

  ‘I don’t know what all that was about,’ I told them, ‘but I now want to get back to a situation where things happen because of orders, and not because it’s what takes people’s fancy.’ I paused to let that sink in, wondering whether to pitch into them harder. They had pulled out without my order. Then again, they had performed brilliantly throughout the mission.

  I decided, there and then, that that was all I was going to say about the sudden disorderly withdrawal. A few moments later and I would have given the order to pull out anyway. We had been taking a lot of incoming fire, and in the heat of the moment some of the lads decided to get out of there. More important than bollocking them for a momentary lapse was to find out if anyone was hurt or missing. My pride came second to that by a long way.

  Miraculously, when I asked for casualties everyone shook his head. There were no wounded. No one had even a scratch, and no one was missing. My only concern now w
as for Pat and his men because we were unable to raise them on the radio. Ken volunteered to take a bike and go back to advise Pat to pull out, if he hadn’t already done so. It was a good offer, but after a moment’s consideration I turned him down.

  ‘No. Stay where you are,’ I told him. ‘If anyone goes back we’re likely to have a blue-on-blue incident. Pat knows we got out. He was in an excellent fire-support position. Let him pick the right moment to pull out while we wait here. Then he’ll find his own way back to us.’

  Ten minutes later we heard the growl of engines as the four Land Rovers emerged out of the darkness. All their crews were intact. As soon as they drew up alongside Pat’s men jumped out and suddenly everybody seemed to be hugging and back-slapping everybody else. Even for the SAS, the end of a mission brings a tremendous release of tension, made up partly of relief and partly of pleasure at having performed well in a difficult and dangerous task. By some incredible miracle, and against far greater odds than we could have anticipated, we had managed to get in and out of the enemy stronghold with every member of the unit present and unwounded. In doing so we had undoubtedly killed and wounded numbers of Iraqi troops, as well as firing the demolition charges on the mast. We had also thoroughly alarmed and confused the enemy.

  My only regret was that, looking to the north, I could still see the steel antenna pointing skywards, the moon glinting on its lattice of girders.

  ‘All that explosive and effort and we couldn’t bring the bloody thing down,’ I said to Mugger.

  ‘Don’t give up yet,’ he said. ‘Blasting metal is a funny business. I suggest we check later today before we write the demolition off as a failure. The mast might easily go at any moment. Perhaps if we’re lucky it’ll be just as Saddam is paying them a courtesy call.’

  If Mugger proved to be right, then it would mean a perfect mission: target destroyed and zero casualties. I could hardly wait for daylight and the opportunity to check whether his optimism was justified. Meanwhile we had to get away, so once the guys had quietened down a bit I ordered them to mount up and move out, Pat’s vehicle taking the lead, as usual.

  Just after first light we arrived back at our LUP where the Unimog was still sitting, untouched, beneath its cam net. We deactivated the booby traps around it, after which I told the guys – all except the first four who were down for sentry duty – to have a brew and some food and get their heads down for a few hours. Then, having made my way back to my vehicle, I was just about to get on the radio and report the results of our mission to HQ when Ken came running over.

  ‘It’s down!’ he yelled. ‘The mast is down!’

  ‘How the hell do you figure that?’ I asked.

  ‘From here you can just see the top of it through the binoculars in the morning sun,’ he said. (The low angle of the sun in the early morning makes it possible to see things at a distance that will not catch the light to the same degree when the sun is higher.) ‘Well, the first time I looked it was still there. But when I looked a couple of minutes later it had gone. Which means it must have collapsed.’

  This was excellent news – if it was true. We had to know.

  ‘Look, Ken,’ I said, ‘if you’re up to it, I’d like you and Ron to go back on bikes to just this side of the motorway – from where the tower should be plainly visible – and do a recce. Don’t take any risks, but if you can get to a point from where you would be able to see the mast if it’s still standing, you’d be doing us all a favour.’

  ‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘I’m pretty damned certain we did the business back there – so I’d like to check for my own sake. It’ll make skipping through all those bullets a damned sight more worthwhile.’

  Although I hadn’t known him before I took over Alpha One Zero, Ron, whom I had detailed to go with Ken, had proved to be an excellent member of the patrol. He was an expert motorcyclist, and had already saved us a lot of time and effort in our forays across the Iraqi desert. He later received a Mention in Despatches for his sterling work throughout our time in Iraq.

  Once the pair of bikes had set out I whistled up ops in Al Jouf and gave them our news, adding that we believed the mast had been successfully brought down. The ops officer told me he would organize an A-10 – the fearsome, and fearsomely ugly, American tank-busting aircraft designated the Thunderbolt, but usually known by its nickname of ‘Warthog’ – to make a run over Victor Two and check it out.

  My report on the mission had been brief and straightforward. It simply stated ‘mission accomplished’. As in every action, the Regiment had, against all the odds, accomplished its all but impossible mission in spectacular style. But it could have ended very differently. I had felt uneasy about the operation right from the start, and even more so when we found the target had already been successfully bombed. There had been a lack of intelligence, and the information we did get had been inaccurate to the point of endangering our lives. We had been told there would be very few enemy defenders, and that had turned out to be wrong. We had not been told that the relay station had already been destroyed, even though Allied HQ must have known of the bombing. After getting off the radio I lit a cigarette and reflected on the whole business. Whatever the truth, we had done the business and got out with all our personnel and all our vehicles intact.

  An hour later Ken and Ron were back, to report that the mast had indeed been toppled, and that the enemy were buzzing about like stirred-up flies, dashing up and down the new motorway in armoured cars and trucks, but giving no sign of pursuit in our direction. To crown it all, that afternoon Al Jouf ops reported that the pilot of the A-10 sent to overfly Victor Two had confirmed that the mast was down.

  There were no herograms. I told the guys we would stay one more night, our fourth, in this same location, so that we could sort ourselves out a little and repack our gear – in other words, do a little house-cleaning. You’d be amazed at how filthy the interior of a Land Rover becomes after a few unwashed SAS members have lived in it for more than a handful of days. Having given them that news, I suddenly realized how tired I was. Time to turn in, I thought.

  Just as I was about to crawl into my sleeping bag, however, Des came across.

  ‘Ken did a great job today,’ he began. I nodded. He seemed rather ill at ease, but after a moment continued, ‘Perhaps when this is all over you can do something for him.’ When I still said nothing, Des plunged gamely on. ‘He was told just before coming out that he was being RTU-ed. That means moving away from Hereford back to the Paras, and his wife is packing the boxes at this moment.’

  ‘What’s he done?’ I asked.

  ‘Been done for drinking and driving for the third time.’

  ‘You’re right, he doesn’t deserve to be chucked out after all he’s done,’ I said. ‘I’ll take it up with the CO as soon as we get back.

  ‘Now, piss off and let me get some sleep. And don’t even think about waking me, unless it’s the end of the world.’ And with that I tugged the top of my sleeping bag over my head, shutting out the daylight.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  IN the event, we remained at the same LUP for a fifth night, moving out before sunset on 9 February, heading south. We had been tasked with a new mission: to locate an area that would accommodate all the SAS patrols operating behind enemy lines.

  We knew that for the next two weeks or so there wasn’t going to be enough moonlight for the Chinooks to fly in fresh supplies; that was why we had recce-ed the abandoned airstrip for a possible resupply flight by a C-130. The CO, however, had come up with a staggering alternative. In what was to prove to be one of the most audacious plans in the Regiment’s history, he decided to send ten 4-ton trucks, with six Land Rovers acting as escorts, some one hundred and fifty kilometres into enemy territory to bring us our essential supplies of food, water, ammunition and fuel.

  The convoy was scheduled to pull out of Al Jouf the next day, and to be on the Iraqi border, ready to steam in, by the 11th. We had until then to seek out a location, within the convo
y’s range, that could accommodate up to a hundred and fifty men and their vehicles, and to make it completely secure.

  When I told the men of the plan, just before we moved out, they reacted with an enthusiastic chorus of approval. Following our recent activities, the prospect of a major get-together within the next few days was welcome news. My other announcement wiped away the smiles in an instant, however. Over the radio HQ had informed me that, while checking out an enemy communications site, three of our men from the other Alpha half-squadron had been separated from their unit, along with a Land Rover, during a fierce firefight in the early hours of that morning. One of the men was believed to have been badly, possibly fatally, wounded, but at this stage I had no names.

  We were always left with a sick feeling whenever we learned that a member of the Regiment had been on the receiving end, but for the guys in my patrol, all of them members of A Squadron, there were close friends involved whom they had known for years. They would more than probably be men who had visited their homes, or joined them with their wives and children on family outings. The news also made us reflect on just how lucky all of us had been to get out with our skins intact the day before.

  It took us two days to find a suitable resupply area, but eventually we located the perfect place in the Wadi Tubal, about fifty kilometres south of our former base. It was a wadi within the main wadi, about a hundred metres wide by five hundred long. The entrance, which was very narrow, zigzagged, making it impossible for anyone to see in without advancing almost into the wadi, while a steep bank across the far end sealed the place off as a kind of cul-de-sac. The sides were high and steep, and from the heights above the whole mini-wadi became invisible if you stepped back just a dozen paces from the edge. It was an excellent defensive position, with plenty of space inside for at least seventy vehicles.