Eye of the Storm

by Peter Ratcliffe

  Taking it in turns, the two NCOs had then half-carried, half-dragged Barry to the cover of a small mound, which sounded like an anthill similar to the ones we had seen two days earlier. While one moved Barry, the other had kept the Iraqis at a distance with single-shot fire, the two unwounded men exchanging places every fifty metres or so. Their situation had seemed hopeless, although, like the true SAS men they were, they had not given up hope. As they prepared to make their final stand a couple of hundred metres from the crashed wagon the enemy had gradually begun to close in on them. With their spare ammunition in the crashed 110, they only had what they were carrying on them, and they had realized that it was only a matter of time before they would have been badly wounded or even killed, or else forced to surrender.

  Although barely conscious, Barry had been aware enough to realize that they were in a pretty dire position, and had therefore ordered them to get the hell out of there while he tried to hold off the enemy. He had added that him alone against a few dozen Iraqis was reasonably fair odds. Jack told me later that he had offered to ‘top’ Barry – put a bullet in his head to save him from possible Iraqi torture – before they made their escape, but the sergeant-major had preferred to take his chances.

  Thanks to Barry, the two of them had managed to escape the enemy-occupied zone and, using their TACBEs, had made contact with an Allied aircraft. Its pilot had helped guide them to a rendezvous with the rest of their half-squadron.

  As I listened to their story that evening in the wadi, I felt a tremendous admiration for these two guys, who had risked their lives trying to pull their sergeant-major out. I felt, too, an overwhelming awe and respect for Barry, whose offer to hold off the enemy while Kevin and Jack got away had called for remarkable courage. These feelings were tinged with sadness, for it seemed almost certain that Barry must have been killed in that last stand, or else have died of his wounds. I also could not help wondering if I had that kind of courage myself, and hoped that I would never be called upon to find out.

  On Sunday, 17 February, we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, the convoy and its escort back towards Saudi Arabia, and the four half-squadrons to their designated operational areas. To my regret, one of my unit was leaving with the convoy.

  Major Peter, who had flown in with our resupply chopper on the 4th, had probably gained more ‘on-the-ground’ experience than anyone had bargained for when he was sent in. He had been in the forefront of the Regiment’s biggest mission of the Gulf War so far, and had shot his first enemy in a face-to-face encounter. It was never intended that he should stay with Alpha One Zero for more than ten days; it just happened to be his luck that he should have arrived at a pretty hectic time.

  Now he was due back in the UK to attend a staff course the following week, something that had been arranged months before, as these things are. If he didn’t show up it would set back his whole career. But that was the British Army, playing it by the book, as usual. Before he pulled out, he came over to my vehicle to say good-bye. We shook hands.

  ‘You know I don’t want to leave,’ he said. ‘These have been the most important days in the army for me so far. I could never have known what it’s really like without doing it myself. I can’t honestly tell you I didn’t have doubts about getting out, because I did. But you got the job done and got us out of there in one piece. Thanks to you, I’ve got stories I can tell along with the best of them.’

  When Peter left, technically Pat reverted to being my 2IC. In reality, however, when I wanted to confide in or consult anyone – which was, I have to say, rarely – I turned to Des. I knew I could count on him for any support if and when I needed it. It was not an officially recognized relationship, and in truth I felt no great need for a 2IC at all. I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

  Alpha One Zero was now tasked to head in the opposite direction from where we had first operated, north-west, to an area near the Jordanian border nicknamed the ‘Iron Triangle’. (We had been on its eastern flank when we had taken over Delta Three Zero’s task on the MSR, before returning to Wadi Tubal.) It was a tract of country covering some two hundred and fifty square kilometres of inhospitable desert wilderness, mainly hills and wadis, bordered by three main roads which formed a rough triangle. Within the vast wadi system inside the triangle there were thought to be possible Scud-launcher locations.

  Our route took us across fairly flat terrain, and in broad daylight we made such good speed that we were approaching our target area less than six hours after leaving Wadi Tubal. I decided to have the patrol lie up just short of the new motorway, marked on our maps as ‘under construction’, and send in a recce team. This motorway, being built to replace MSR3 as the main Amman-to-Baghdad highway, was the same road we had negotiated on our way to blow up the Scud microwave guidance system at Victor Two, some one hundred and fifty kilometres to the north-east. There we had filled in the central culvert with sandbags. Here, if the map was accurate, I planned to make a much more stylish crossing.

  Up to this point, Serious had not been given a single task that would have allowed him to demonstrate his skills or his leadership qualities. To give him a chance to show how good he was, I selected him to see us over the new motorway and into our target area. When I called him over to my vehicle, however, he immediately put on his suspicious face. He was not used to being summoned by the RSM, and probably thought I had caught him out in some misdemeanour and was about to give him a bollocking.

  ‘Yes, Billy?’ he asked.

  I let him sweat it out for a few moments, then unfolded my map on the bonnet of the Land Rover. On it I indicated to him where the new motorway should cross in front of us, about three kilometres to the west of our LUP. As I’ve said, our maps – air charts for pilots, in fact – were not that good and lacked accurate detail, but there seemed to be some kind of a junction system there, with what appeared from the map to be a bridge. Crossing bridges and using roads is usually taboo in the Regiment – they are often guarded, and anyway you are very exposed on them – but sometimes you have to break the rules. To me, this looked like one of those times.

  ‘I want you to go ahead and take a look at this place,’ I told him. ‘Because I’m putting you in charge of getting us all safely across the motorway. A bridge could be the easiest way of doing it.’

  ‘And an easy place to get caught,’ he said, reasonably enough. ‘If they’ve built roads around this triangle it must be because there’s something important in there. And that means there are going to be troops on these roads ready to go in where they’re needed. A bridge is where they’re most likely to be hanging around.’

  It may be a flaw in my character, but I have never been very good at listening to people telling me what I already know. Now my irritation began to show.

  ‘Look, Serious,’ I said. ‘Before you start thinking again that I’m going to get you all killed, just go and have a look at the bridge. If you can’t work out a way to get us over by that route then start looking for an alternative. But at least look at the simple way first before you start telling me that we have to drive under roads or along culverts, and all the rest of that complicated crap.’

  He had the sense to keep quiet, so I told him to pick out a second vehicle to go with him and report back before midnight.

  Serious was back within the time limit I had set, and with good news. The bridge and the new motorway running under it were still not operational and as a result were not lit at night. More to the point, the whole area was deserted. ‘It’s an ideal place to cross,’ he enthused, completely forgetting that using the bridge had originally been my idea and that he had opposed it. Still, he’d made a good job of the recce.

  ‘Well done,’ I told him. ‘We’ll pull out in thirty minutes. This is one manoeuvre, I think, which we’re better off conducting in the dark – even if Saddam’s lads do seem to be playing away at the moment. Just pretend we’re your lost sheep and shepherd us all across.’

  It took less than an hour to cover t
he ground between our temporary LUP and the bridge, and once there I left it to Serious to organize our crossing. The big, six-lane dual carriageway passing under the bridge was completely finished, with even the lampposts in place along the central reservation. There was nothing out of place, and not a scrap of rubbish or spoil anywhere. The only thing missing was traffic, making the overall effect rather eerie, a feeling heightened by the strangeness of coming across what might have been an ordinary British motor-way deep in enemy territory and thousands of miles from home. The bridge itself, probably constructed by British engineers, was a typical motorway overpass built on giant concrete pillars. There the similarity with roads at home ended, however, for the roadway over the bridge was paved for only a hundred metres or so on either side, and then petered out into desert.

  ‘I wonder if they’ll put in a road here that actually goes somewhere, or will it just remain a convenience for the shepherds to get their sheep and goats across the motorway?’ I said to Mugger.

  ‘More money than sense, if you ask me,’ he answered, after a moment’s thought. ‘They could have run a prefab concrete tunnel underneath for a fraction of the price. But perhaps they were thinking of us when they built it.’ I saw his teeth flash in a grin. He was obviously thinking of my remark to Serious, since he’d been hovering near by when I’d briefed the latter.

  It was odd, too, that Allied pilots hadn’t spotted the bridge and attacked it. The road must be very close to being finished, and with Jordan now firmly committed on Saddam’s side, it could be brought into play at any moment as a much more efficient way of bringing supplies into Iraq – now suffering severely from embargoes imposed after the invasion of Kuwait – than the old supply route. A couple of well-aimed bombs on the bridge would well and truly block the motorway beneath. I made a note to pass this on to Intel – after we had got out of the Iron Triangle, of course. No sense in knocking out such a convenient escape route until we were well clear of the area.

  When we reached the short paved run-up to the bridge, Serious, in the lead wagon, signalled us to halt. Then he sent two motorcyclists and four men on foot across the bridge to make certain it was still secure and that we had free exit at the other end. When they confirmed that all was well, he waved us on to go ahead in convoy. It was a real pleasure not to have the usual rattles and bone-jarring bumps of standard desert travel, even for a few hundred metres, but it was a luxury that lasted only a couple of minutes. Then the metalled road petered out and we were back to our normal clattering progress.

  Once across, I told Mugger to pull up alongside the lead 110 and called across to Serious, ‘Well done. Now take us in about five clicks and we’ll lie up until daylight. Clearing this wadi system’s going to be no job for vampires. It’s one for the sunshine boys.’

  It had been apparent to me since we’d first been tasked with the mission, and after studying the air chart of the area, that the only way to clear the system of mobile, or even fixed, Scud launchers was by patrolling it in daylight. The vastness of the wadis – some of which, though shallow, were immensely wide, and most of which meandered through low hill country and then, further west, ran into an open plain or plateau – meant that we could never cover enough ground by night, and might easily overlook some vital site in such broken country.

  In order to cover the area I’d designated for each recce I adopted a leap-frog technique. From each starting point four Land Rovers would advance along one side of the wadi for a kilometre, and then halt. The other four, with the Unimog, would then advance two kilometres on the other side before halting, when it would be the turn of the first group to go forward another two kilometres, and so on. In the narrower wadis we advanced as usual in single file. It was tedious, repetitive work, but it had to be done. Nor was I much worried about being discovered by the enemy. We had no indication from Intel of substantial bodies of Iraqi troops in the area, and we would have warning of any approaching by the dust kicked up by their vehicles. I was also confident that, if we did meet with a body of the enemy which we could not drive off, then we would be able to escape relatively easily in the broken terrain, if necessary scattering to meet up again later at one of the prearranged RVs we selected each morning.

  That afternoon we were plodding along an old riverbed, almost too shallow to be recognized as one, heading on to the plain to the north-west with the sun high over a distant mountain range ahead of us, when the leading vehicle – Pat’s – stopped. Through the binoculars I had already spotted a place some fifteen or twenty kilometres ahead, which had masts or aerials sprouting from it and which might turn out to be a missile site. I jumped out, glad in some ways to be able to stretch my legs, and walked forward to Pat’s wagon.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.

  ‘Enemy location,’ came the reply.

  ‘Where?’

  Pat pointed towards the distant site. ‘Over there.’

  ‘You mean that thing in the distance? I saw that ages ago. Just keep going. That isn’t a problem.’

  This seemed to be too much for his driver, Yorky, who suddenly started babbling, ‘You’re going to get us all killed! That’s the enemy over there. You’re going to get us killed!’ I was already irritated enough by the sudden, purposeless halt. Seeing him gibbering away like that snapped my temper.

  ‘Shut it, you,’ I ordered, and then motioned every-body out of their vehicles. As the crews of the lead Land Rovers started to comply, I sent back word with the duty motorcyclist for everyone to come forward.

  I waited until all of them had gathered around me in a loose semi-circle. Then, fixing them with a glare as the last of them shuffled into place, I pitched in: ‘I am sick to death of people questioning my decisions. Especially you’ – and I pointed at Yorky. ‘We are here to do a job, and we are at war. The task is to clear this wadi system. We are not going to do it slowly because that would take weeks. But we are going to do it, and it will be done my way.’ I paused, before adding, ‘Are there any questions?’

  I looked around at the strange collection of curiously dressed scarecrows with their beards and shemaghs and rifles. Not one of them made a murmur.

  ‘All right. Get in your vehicles and let’s get the job done.’

  Perhaps it was wrong of me to bawl out the entire patrol for the behaviour of one individual, especially as the men had proved themselves, in action and out of it, to be as tough, enduring, self-reliant and brave as the SAS demanded. Nevertheless, Alpha One Zero had made a very bad start to its time in Iraq, and I was determined, as much for the men’s sake as for mine or the Regiment’s, to wipe out the memory of that hesitant beginning. I meant us to become – and to be seen as – the best fighting patrol the SAS had.

  This was only the second time I had had close dealings with Yorky, and it was the last. He had proved himself an extremely reluctant participant in the recce before Victor Two, when I had to send him back while the rest of us carried on. After the incident in the Iron Triangle I had no further truck with the man. Even such short acquaintance left a very bad taste in the mouth, however – though not as bad as the taste left by the fictions in his book.

  Clearing the Iron Triangle took us less than three days, and we were therefore ordered further south to clear a similar wadi system near ‘Ar Rutbah, an Iraqi town on the MSR that ran past Victor Two eastwards to Baghdad, and which lay just south of the new motorway. To reach our new area of operations we would head east of the LUP we had used for the last three nights, then swing south to cross the motorway at the same bridge before travelling on to establish a new LUP. From there we would be able to recce the wadi system to the west of us, as far as ‘Ar Rutbah to the north-west.

  I again put Serious in charge of crossing the motor-way, reminding him that if we had been seen going in, the bridge would be the ideal place at which to set an ambush as we made our way out of the Triangle. His recce seemed to take for ever, but when we eventually recrossed the bridge I was certain there wasn’t so much as a single desert
rat within five kilometres that Serious hadn’t taken note of.

  Once we had safely crossed the motorway I notified Intel about the possible missile site we had spotted at the far end of the Iron Triangle, leaving it to Coalition HQ as to whether the Allied air forces should pay the place a visit. I also threw in my opinion that the bridge we had just crossed was another worthy candidate for the attention of our strike aircraft. My suggestions were, I was told, duly noted.

  It was now two full weeks since our attack on the microwave station and I found myself almost wishing for some action. So did most of the men. It was hard to believe that scooting about hundreds of kilometres behind enemy lines could be quite so bloody yawn-making. The boredom was increased by the fact that our new area of operation was almost completely flat, with barely discernible wadis and few other features, natural or man-made. Patrolling for hour after hour in the vehicles, maintaining a constant lookout for enemy locations or movements, took its toll on all of us, and the absence of any excitement simply made the task duller. After our first day, however, we came across a man-made berm, and I therefore decided to test a pet theory I had been carrying around in my head for weeks. Halting the column, I asked the guys to break out their spades, indicated the sandbank rising above us, and set them to work. They probably thought I was mad, choosing to cut through the berm – which was about four metres high – at that point, when we could so easily have followed it to its end and returned back along the other side, to take up the next leg of our clearance pattern. None the less, it made a change from checking wadis out, and they set to with a will.

  It took only thirty minutes to dig a gap wide enough and low enough to get the vehicles through. My theory was proved: this was the same patrol that had spent five days trying – and failing – to get over a similar berm.