Eye of the Storm

by Peter Ratcliffe

  Over the radio that night, 23 February, I received new orders for the patrol. We were to head south for the Saudi Arabian border and return to Al Jouf for what the army calls ‘rest and recuperation’. When I passed on the news it brought smiles to the faces of everyone, not so much because we were going back to a safe zone, but because the journey would relieve the boredom of the past week. Had we been involved in a full-blown firefight with the enemy during that week, then I think we would all have been a good deal more reluctant to pull out.

  From reports on the BBC World Service we knew that the Coalition’s main land offensive had been launched against the Iraqi forces in Kuwait that day. Then, later that night, more up-to-date bulletins seemed to indicate that the war might be over much sooner than had been forecast by Allied HQ or the media. Indeed, some commentators were talking about the war ending in hours or, at worst, no more than days. It was difficult for us, sitting around a radio set at our LUP a hundred miles inside Iraq, to accept that the war could possibly be over before we reached Saudi Arabia.

  Our spirits were high, however, and I dug out my rum bottle – still more than half full – and invited the sergeants to join me at my Land Rover to celebrate the war’s imminent end. Harry, my radio operator, tried to sneak into the circle and grab a turn at the bottle, but I told him to fuck off. This was a Sergeants’ Mess do – closed to outsiders.

  The following morning, as we were about to pull out for the border, I took my crew’s Union jack, which had been spread out as usual on the ground near my wagon, and tied it to the radio aerial behind the driver. The crews of the other vehicles followed suit, and as we neared the border we must have appeared, to anyone who saw us, like some ancient band of crusaders emerging from the desert with colours flying. There the resemblance would have ended, however, because in all other respects we looked like the most evil band of cut-throats from the filthiest souk in Arabia. Almost all of us were sporting ragged beards and wearing a strange mixture of military and bedouin gear, with shemaghs loosely wrapped around our faces. We were mainly filthy, and every one of us stank to high heaven. Nor can our piratical appearance have been helped by the fact that we were extremely heavily armed.

  All of which explained why the Regiment had sent a special reception committee from Al Jouf, under the command of Major Bill, to see that we got back into Saudi Arabia safely. The last thing any of us needed now was a blue-on-blue incident between zealous border guards and our well-tested patrol. (It would turn out later that our caution was justified, for a very high proportion of the casualties among Coalition forces during the Gulf War were due not to enemy action, but – to use a really contradictory euphemism beloved of the media – to ‘friendly fire’.) We came out at the old fort where Alpha One Zero had made its original, if delayed, crossing, and were treated to some pretty strange looks from the garrison of local troops. Had our guys from Al Jouf not been there to vouch for us, the Saudis might well have opened fire, believing us to be enemy brigands. With good reason, too, for in no way did we look like representatives of the elite of the British Army.

  If there was something faintly unreal about our arrival back in Allied territory, reality struck within minutes of our crossing the border, and in the most mundane of ways. After thousands of kilometres of crunching our way over some of the most inhospitable terrain in the Middle East without a single puncture, the Unimog picked one up as it turned on to our first tarmac road in Saudi Arabia. So it was that we, the heroes of Desert Storm – well, in our eyes, at least – were reduced to changing a wheel at the roadside.

  I took that opportunity to say my goodbyes. Having rounded the guys up for a last chat, I thanked them all and told them how well I thought they had performed. ‘I want you to head back to Al Jouf under your own steam,’ I concluded.

  ‘Where are you going, then?’ chirped up one soul.

  ‘I’m off to ‘Ar Ar,’ I said, and with that I headed for Major Bill’s vehicle.

  Bill and I pulled out without further ado, heading for ’Ar Ar, with a hot bath and a cold beer high on my list of priorities. But when I arrived at the headquarters building on the airbase, which was jointly run by US and British forces, it was time for afternoon tea, an apparently immovable ritual in the life of the place. My beer was going to have to wait, and so was the bath.

  I was unshaven, smelly and more than a little dishevelled when I walked into headquarters. Luckily I managed to find some guys I knew from the base’s ops and planning office, and had just settled down with a decent brew and a cigarette when an American officer loomed over me. Looking down a nose straighter and longer than my cigarette, he told me, ‘There’s no smoking in here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s a fire hazard.’

  I had to laugh. ‘You want to get out there,’ I said, nodding towards the desert outside. ‘Now that’s what you call a fire hazard.’ His face took on the tight-arsed look assumed by officers the world over when they think their dignity or authority is under threat. Since he plainly hadn’t the remotest idea what I was talking about, however, I simply walked away. I wouldn’t put my cigarette out, though.

  Outside, I was buttonholed by a member of Delta Force, the US Special Forces equivalent of the SAS and effectively our sister group in America. Word of my arrival back from a fighting patrol in Iraq must have got around, for he asked me if I would mind giving his boys a briefing, as they were due to go into enemy territory the following night. They were heading for an area south of ‘Ar Rutbah, tasked with taking over where we had left off the previous day. I went along to their tent and he called his guys around and I began answering questions. They wanted to know about enemy activity and locations, time and distance in relation to travel, navigation, concealment, resupply – in fact, the whole shooting match. When the questions eventually dried up I told them, ‘The best way to do it is to go over in the morning and travel through the day.’

  There was a shocked silence, during which they looked at me as though I were a Martian. What I had said went against everything they had been taught and had practised. ‘You can make great speed,’ I continued, determined to get the point over to them. ‘You can bomb up the plain just like on a motorway doing about fifty, and you only need to slow down when you’re approaching the target area.’

  Soon after that they thanked me very much and ushered me out of their tent. I’m sure they put me down as just another crazy Brit who’d spent too much time in the sun, although they were too polite to say so. I found out later that they had ignored my advice and gone over the following night, as planned. They never saw any action because, as everyone now knows, the war was over by the next day.

  I drove back to Al Jouf on the following day. My first action was to seek out the CO and ask for a private word with him. Once in his office, he was full of praise for our patrol’s success, but I cut him off.

  ‘I want to talk to you about Ken’s RTU,’ I said.

  ‘What RTU?’

  ‘I’m told it’s because of a drinking-and-driving offence,’ I explained. ‘He’s a great lad and he performed brilliantly behind enemy lines. Nobody could have been more positive or enthusiastic. He’s a damned good soldier and, irresponsible driving aside, a role model for anyone else joining the Regiment. I don’t think we can afford to lose him. He’ll be an asset to the Paras if he goes back, but it will be our loss.’

  The CO checked with Hereford and found that Des had been right. Ken was due to be returned to his original unit as soon as we got back from Saudi Arabia. Determined not to lose a good man, the CO spoke personally to Ken, and ended by telling him, ‘You can write a letter to your wife now, telling her to start unpacking. You’re not going anywhere.’

  After that, things got back to normal very quickly.

  There was a final, sombre accounting to be made, however. When the war ended we learned that three members of Bravo Two Zero were dead, Sergeant Philips and Corporal Lane from exposure and Trooper Consiglio from enemy fire, and
of the remaining five members of the patrol all but one had been captured. In addition, a fourth member of the Regiment, Trooper Denbury, had been killed with Alpha Three Zero just six days before the war had ended, shot dead during a series of running firefight skirmishes with the enemy well inside Iraq.

  Yet despite our sadness over losing four of our comrades, there was universal jubilation when it was announced that, almost unbelievably, Sergeant-Major Barry was alive. It turned out that he had been found, barely alive, by the enemy at the place where Kevin and Jack had left him, and had been transferred to a hospital in Baghdad. There, by some miracle, he was operated on by one of Iraq’s top orthopaedic surgeons, who had done most of his training in Manchester and who spoke perfect English. The surgeon had told Barry that he was glad to be able to repay, in some small way, all the good things that had happened to him while he was in England. We learned that Barry would make a perfect recovery, and that he was to be flown out of Iraq by the Red Cross within days.

  By the time I had typed up my report and produced a proper map of Alpha One Zero’s desert wanderings, it was time to decamp back to Victor, in the by now far sunnier and warmer Emirates. From there we began to trickle back on the C-130s to Lyneham, and thence to Hereford. I arrived back at Stirling Lines on Gold Cup day, and the first thing I did was go to the bank and draw some money, which I put on a horse.

  It lost. I knew I was home.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  WE came home from the Gulf in late February and early March 1991, and at once began to pick up the threads of normal regimental life – or normal for the SAS, anyway. There was a good deal of media speculation at the time about the Regiment’s role during the war against Iraq, most of it wildly off-target. The truth about what we had actually done would not begin to filter out until after the publication of General de la Billière’s Storm Command in 1992 and, particularly Bravo Two Zero, ‘Andy McNab’s’ own account of his doomed patrol, which came out in 1993 and completely rejuvenated both press and public interest in the SAS. It is an interest that amounts at times almost to mania.

  I went back to being RSM, rather than the commander of half a Sabre Squadron, and everyone took up the threads of their lives and careers pretty much where they’d left off the previous December. The only truly out-of-the-ordinary events were the debriefings of all those SAS members who had been on patrol or in action during the Gulf War, which were held in front of the whole Regiment and recorded on video.

  The principle – that everyone would benefit from hearing of the experiences of those who had been at the sharp end, and from discussions of mistakes as well as triumphs – was a sound one, and much was learned from those sessions that has subsequently served the Regiment well in other conflicts. The one jarring note, though, is that what was said then often differs wildly from what has been offered to the public in some of the ‘SAS-in-the-Gulf ‘ books published subsequently. I will come to this later, but will add the comment that readers should take some of the stories peddled to them in these books not with a pinch of salt, but with a shovelful.

  Since 1991 also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Regiment by David Stirling in the Western Desert during the Second World War, we also had to work on the arrangements for the various celebrations planned to mark the event. Apart from a formal dinner in the Guildhall in London at which the Prince of Wales spoke, it was also decided to hold a dinner in the Officers’ Mess at Stirling Lines. The aim was to raise funds for the Regimental Association, and selected guests were invited to buy a ticket or tickets, priced at £250 each. There were ten people to a table, and each was presided over by a member of the SAS who, besides acting as host, was there to talk about the Regiment and its history. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the guest speaker was Margaret Thatcher, deposed at the end of 1990 as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party, but still one of the most ardent advocates and supporters of the SAS.

  After the dinner Mrs Thatcher stayed the night at the commanding officer’s house as the guest of the CO and his wife, returning to the camp the following morning. Shortly after her arrival, two Puma helicopters touched down on the parade ground. One of the aircraft had brought General Norman Schwarzkopf, and in the other were General (as he now was) Sir Peter and Lady de la Billière. After the usual greetings, they were taken to a comfortably furnished anteroom on the first floor of the Officers’ Mess, where Mrs Thatcher was waiting for them. They met for about an hour, and then the Iron Lady left for London, sweeping out of Stirling Lines with her usual efficient bustle. With the formalities – and politics – out of the way, DLB, being on his home ground, took General Schwarzkopf for a live demonstration at the building we call the ‘Killing House’.

  For a supposedly clandestine organization, an awful lot is known about the SAS, and the Killing House – or ‘Close-Quarter Battle House’, to give it its proper title – is nowadays probably the Regiment’s least well-kept secret. Set in an area of Stirling Lines well away from prying eyes, the building was specially constructed in the 1970s to enable the SAS to practise anti-terrorist techniques, and particularly where we might be called on to deal with incidents involving skyjacking, kidnapping, hostage-release or assassination. It is a labyrinth of small rooms, passages, doorways and obstacles, the walls covered with thick rubber to prevent ricochets. The place is also equipped with life-sized targets – some of which can be made suddenly to appear or move by the instructors using remote control – representing not only terrorists or other enemies, but also innocent hostages or bystanders. Only live ammunition is used, in order to make the simulated situations as realistic as possible. The main room, in which people playing the part of hostages are placed, is equipped with a kitchen table and some hard chairs, as well as ‘terrorist’ or ‘hostage’ targets, and these too can be made to change position by the instructors. The whole place reeks of cordite, adding to its rather sinister atmosphere. Nevertheless, it is a very effective training area, and there are many people alive today – some of whom we never talk about – who owe their lives to skills that were developed and honed in the Killing House at Hereford.

  It should really have some of those Royal Warrant coats of arms over the door, since it must certainly qualify for a ‘By Appointment to …’ tag, given all the royalty who have been there for demonstrations of our effectiveness. Mind you, if they had had any doubts when they went in, I’m certain that they didn’t when they came out. It would be a very strange kind of person indeed who failed to be impressed by seeing the Regiment in action in the Killing House.

  After the demonstration, ‘Stormin’ Norman’ was brought back, with DLB, to the Officers’ Mess for a buffet lunch with officers and selected NCOs from the Regiment who had taken part in the Gulf campaign. He talked to men at random, before presenting a ceremonial Bowie knife to the head of Britain’s Special Forces. With his usual mixture of charm and candour he kept his speech low key, simply saying, ‘One of our finest soldiers was Jim Bowie. It is fitting that you should have the knife he invented.’ The assembled members of the Regiment understood, and appreciated, the message.

  With the presentation out of the way, General Schwarzkopf came over to chat with me, and in particular to ask about the Sergeants’ Mess meeting we had held behind enemy lines in the desert, and for which he had signed the minutes. We had got someone to take an official photograph of the meeting, and after our return to Hereford I commissioned David Rowlands, a well-known military artist, on behalf of the Sergeants’ Mess, to paint a picture from the photograph. I had then got a printing firm to produce a limited edition of 150 high-quality prints from the finished painting, each of which was numbered. Now, in the Officers’ Mess, I asked General Schwarzkopf if he would sign the prints, which would then be sold to members of the Regiment or used for presentation purposes. He was sympathetic, but explained that until he retired from the United States Army on 28 August he was forbidden, under American military law, to sign or endorse any product. He added, however,
that if I were to get the prints to him after he had officially retired, then he would be willing to sign them.

  The plan was that each of the limited-edition prints would have five signatures: the artist’s, General de la Billière’s, General Schwarzkopf’s, the CO’s, and mine. August came and DLB and the CO signed the prints, David Rowlands signed them, and I signed them. Then I took all 150 of them to Tampa, Florida, where General Schwarzkopf was based. He proved as good as his word, signing every one of the prints even though there were many other calls on his time. We sold them for £45 each, which made the whole venture self-funding, for the money we raised paid for the painting, the prints and for my flights to and from the United States. Thereafter, the original hung proudly on the wall of the Sergeants’ Mess at Stirling Lines in Hereford.

  That year brought other extraordinary events, and other VIPs to Hereford, among them the Queen Mother, who paid a formal visit to the Regiment that summer. As the RSM, I was placed next to her at lunch. It will come as no surprise to anyone that I found her charming, interested, and delightfully easy to talk to, and with the additional gift of making everyone feel perfectly at ease in her presence.

  In the following year, by a happy combination of circumstances, a different kind of celebrity came to Hereford. Like many boys in this country, I had grown up hoping to play for Manchester United. I never did, of course; equally, though, I never imagined that one day I would host the team’s visit to Stirling Lines. As a fan of Manchester United, when the telephone in my office in Hereford rang one morning in 1992, I immediately recognized the Scots burr of United’s brilliant and now legendary manager, Alex Ferguson. To me who, as a small boy, had stood on the terraces at Old Trafford with my pockets jingling with change filched from my father, it was like talking to God. I almost stood to attention.