by H. C. Tayler
My arrival at the Company Headquarters coincided with the news that we were to be replaced by another company and withdrawn from the city. Good news indeed, made better by our destination, which was the palace, successfully seized by J Company the previous evening. The place erupted into a frenzy of packing and equipment stowage as the Marines scrambled into the vehicles, eager to get to the palace and do a spot of looting of their own. A convoy of vehicles quickly formed and within minutes we were rolling east along a road parallel to the river.
Saddam’s palace looked impressive enough from a distance but on closer inspection was disappointingly lacking in opulence. Situated in expansive grounds, it consisted of a series of ornate buildings backing onto the Shat-al-Arab river and a plethora of smaller, less impressive buildings set back from the river, which I could only assume had been designed to house servants. The most impressive structure - essentially the centre of mass of the whole palace complex - was a huge marble-fronted affair, complete with gigantic stone pillars either side of the front door. Inside, grandiose marble staircases ascended from a huge, airy entrance lobby to a series of enormous, bare bedrooms. (Needless to say, the CO had adopted this building as his Headquarters. For all its ostentatious gaudiness, in my opinion it was much more becoming of a battle group commander than the 1970s dross back at Bickleigh.) The whole area was surrounded by lawns mostly unkempt - punctuated by a series of ornamental lakes and crisscrossed by roads and bridges. With very few exceptions, the interior of most of the buildings was unfinished many had no electrical wiring and were lacking in even rudimentary plumbing. By the time I arrived any loose fittings and furnishings had been purloined by the magpies of J Company, leaving the place even more bereft of creature comforts. J Company themselves had moved into an adjacent building, almost as flamboyant as the Headquarters palace, the rear of which featured a huge marble balcony jutting out over the Shat-al-Arab. In the water beneath the balcony was a tangle of barbed wire and steel pickets, designed to prevent riverboats from approaching the palace. Preventing Marines from swimming is broadly similar to keeping a Labrador retriever out of water - impossible. The more adventurous souls within J Company had discovered that the barbed wire entanglement could be cleared with a running jump from the balcony and several dozen men were happily swimming in the river below, enjoying a respite from the incessant heat of the afternoon sun, despite the best exhortations of the adjutant for them to get back onto dry land.
Beyond J Company’s temporary home lay another palatial building, largely unoccupied. I explored its many empty rooms before discovering my old chums from the combat camera team ensconced in an upstairs bedroom - which of course was lacking a bed, or any other furniture come to that. Somewhat larger than a squash court, and with high ceilings to match, the room had the advantage of marble walls and shuttered windows, which meant it was pleasantly cool despite the 40+ Centigrade temperature outside. Inevitably a stove was already lit and I rapidly accepted their offer of tea. I dragged my belongings up the stairs, lay myself down on a sleeping mat and immediately drifted off to sleep.
A half-decent night’s sleep did me the power of good and I awoke feeling if not optimistic about my situation, at least not as gloomy as I had been the previous days. After all, we had taken Basra without too much fuss, I had avoided further injury, my leg was on the mend, and I had set up home in a palace. All in all, things could have been worse. I set off for a stroll around the grounds, keen to get my bearings and avoid the headquarters staff for as long as possible. Turning away from the Commando Headquarters, I followed the road across a small bridge. A small distance away I spotted K Company’s vehicles parked neatly outside yet another impressive-looking marble edifice, and BRF’s Land Rovers could be seen coming and going from outside a smaller, less ostentatious building further away still. I strolled on, alone in my thoughts, until I was rudely interrupted by the roar of an engine and the squealing of tyres as the BGE’s quad bike slid to a halt alongside me.
“Harry! What brings you down this way?” He didn’t wait for a response but simply shouted at me to get onboard so he could give me a lift to his ‘office’. There was no pillion seat so I perched atop the steel luggage rack on the back and the bike took off underneath me like a scalded cat. Gears crunched and we gathered pace, stiffly ignoring the 10 mph speed limit imposed on the camp by the RSM.
“I got it well over 50 yesterday night!” he yelled above the noise of the wind and engine, “and I reckon she’ll do 60 if I start my run from one of the bridges. Trouble is, the bloody road’s too short!” As if to illustrate the point he slammed on the brakes and we screeched to a halt outside an unremarkable-looking two-story building a short distance from the main gates to the palace grounds. The oblong block was constructed from concrete, though the front wall had been clad in black marble to give it a veneer of authority. The BGE vaulted from the bike and barged through the doors, evidently eager to show off his new quarters. Inside, it was plainly obvious why the engineers had commandeered this particular building: unlike the grandiose palaces to which the Marines had flocked, their abode was fully furnished. Carpeted hallways led to a series of small, comfortable rooms, complete with sofas, dining suites, beds -there were even little china vases on the bedside tables. After a night spent with nothing more than a finger-thick kip-mat between me and a bare marble floor, I wandered around in a state of ill-concealed envy.
“No idea how we’ll get all the loot home,” commented the BGE with a wry smile, “but I’m sure we’ll manage it somehow.”(4)
We whiled away much of the morning drinking coffee laced with scotch and enjoying the cool air that was afforded by the thick concrete walls. For much of the morning, K Company’s vehicles rumbled past outside, closely followed by L Company as 42 Commando sent out numerous patrols in a futile effort to halt the looting. I stayed well away from the Headquarters, happy to take advantage of the Royal Engineers’ hospitality and, more importantly, avoiding the possibility of being sent out on patrol.
By mid afternoon, some of the morning patrols returned to the palace, bringing with them stories of a town descending into chaos. The lawlessness had become so widespread that looters were openly walking into the hospital wards and helping themselves to medical paraphernalia, despite the pleas of the doctors that the equipment was not only in desperately short supply but also utterly valueless outside the hospital. Short of transport, the Marines ended up dispatching a handful of their number around the town in a borrowed ambulance from which they blared loudspeaker messages exhorting the citizens of Basra to stop looting the hospital for their own good. I have no idea whether it was effective but the novelty value of seeing an ambulance chock full of Marines and loudspeakers was enough to grab the attention of the locals, and the boys returned to base full of stories of high jinks with the ambulance drivers, who had clearly enjoyed their impromptu sightseeing tour.
The traffic in and out of the main gate was not exclusively military during that long, hot day in Basra. Civilian press vehicles began to arrive in ever-increasing numbers, many sporting satellite broadcast dishes on their roofs. Not officially attached to any military unit, most of these camera crews had taken a gamble and driven up from the Kuwaiti border unescorted as soon as they heard the city had fallen. In an attempt to avoid coalition fire many of their vehicles - mainly Toyota and Mitsubishi 4x4s - had identifying chevrons hastily painted onto the doors and bonnet, or simply stuck on with black masking tape. In every case the crews looked relieved to have made it unscathed through the insanity that was sweeping the town and to be safely behind the solid walls of the palace. They rapidly became even happier once it was made plain that there was accommodation for them (albeit a little spartan) and that the Marines were generous hosts who typically kept them supplied with ration pack meals and endless cups of tea.(5) The marble steps leading to the front doors of the palace became a regular backdrop for TV news bulletins over the ensuing days, and the men of 42 Commando became increasingly adept at cr
eeping up behind the journalists and getting their faces broadcast on the evening news.
The following day was much the same, insofar as I managed to avoid any of the tedium of patrolling and spent most of my day in hiding with the Engineers. Basra was still in turmoil, although the worst of the looting was dying down, principally, I suspect, because there was nothing left to steal. Public disquiet was already slowly starting to gravitate towards the British troops, mainly because there was no-one else accountable within the town. The water supply was still not functioning properly, the electricity supply was non-existent, and law and order were completely absent, so it came as little surprise that the good people of Basra should demand a few improvements. In any event, I reasoned that I was much safer behind the wire in the camp than on patrol outside - an assumption that was well-founded, since hardliners were still mounting attacks on patrols and checkpoints throughout the town. The day brought more journalists to the palace and an influx of media “minders” from Brigade and Divisional Headquarters. Several of them were well known to me from earlier campaigns (I had served in Afghanistan and Sierra Leone with most of the Media Ops crews) so I wasted no time in cadging a drink from them. It is a truism that the people most likely to carry booze in a war zone are journalists - and if you aren’t friendly with any of the journos, then their minders are almost as reliable. An old colleague from Kandahar days discreetly produced a half-decent bottle of malt from his bergen and as luck would have it, I had just received a parcel from Roddy Woodstock which included a brace of Cuban cigars. We agreed to meet on the palace roof that evening for a civilised drink and smoke away from prying eyes - not to mention the swarms of insects that gathered each evening near the banks of the river.
Everything else around the palace was being filmed so it came as little surprise to see the TV cameras set up to record the CO’s evening briefing. Rather than being held in the bare rooms of the palace, the meeting was held outside on the riverbank, presumably because it created a more atmospheric backdrop for the television pictures. It also meant I was eaten alive by mosquitoes, which did little to improve morale and simply sent me into a frenzy of silent hypochondria in which I pondered once again whether or not southern Iraq was a malarial zone. Thankfully the evening brief was uneventful; no-one so much as remarked on my absence during the day, and I managed to scuttle away before I got tasked with any suicide missions the following day. The only high note was provided by the BGE, who waited until the cameras were trained upon him before announcing, to the incredulity of all present, that his Engineers had discovered a Silkworm Missile launcher in the city centre. Realising it was a gag, the TV crews quickly panned over to the Ops Officer, who struggled to contain his mirth as the briefing continued. As the sun disappeared below the horizon the palace grounds were illuminated by several dozen floodlights as various TV crews prepared to broadcast their news bulletins home. Unlike the highly mobile ITN crew who had been with us since Kuwait, these chaps came equipped with all the paraphernalia of Broadcasting House, from floodlighting to large-scale cameras mounted on huge tripods and long booms carrying huge furry microphones. The resulting footage made a stark contrast from the fuzzy videophone broadcasts of 42’s embedded journalists and the clean marble backdrop of the palace gave Iraq an improbably civilised feel to the viewers back home. At least, that’s what they tell me - like everyone else present, I never got to see the footage.
Briefing over, I clambered up a fire escape and onto the roof of my quarters, a peaceful spot looking out over the river and high enough to afford a pretty good view of much of the town. The Media Ops boys, not being needed at the CO’s briefing, were already tucking into the scotch with some aplomb. Happily, the whisky was supplemented by several hip flasks of brandy and a small bottle of rum, so there was plenty of booze to go round. I puffed away merrily on one of Roddy’s cigars - a Cohiba siglo No2, if memory serves - while we exchanged stories from the previous three weeks. In the background a small world-band radio was tuned to the BBC World Service and, in between my hammed-up tales of derring-do from the Al Faw, I caught snatches of news from elsewhere in the country. Baghdad had fallen that day - images of Saddam’s statue being torn down were being shown repeatedly by every TV station -and there were further reports of Iraqi troops surrendering en masse to the north and east of the city. Then came the infamous “mission accomplished” broadcast by George W Bush, announcing the end of major combat operations. Cheers went up around the palace as the news was passed and, if they were anything like me, every man present started thinking of a return to Blighty. (If I’d known how long it was going to be before we were sent home I would have found the nearest logistician and spat in his eye, but there’s no use crying over spilt milk, as they say.) The Media Ops boys and I raised a glass and toasted our success and, as if to crown the moment, a Royal Navy Sea King helicopter flew low overhead, firing anti-missile flares from its belly in an impromptu celebration. The pilot, evidently enjoying the moment, banked hard in front of the palace and the light from his flares was reflected by the river and lit up the marble walls of the palace quite spectacularly. The cheering grew all the louder, and I took advantage of the distraction to quietly quaff as much of the booze as I could while no-one was looking.
I intended to spend the following day - my last full day in Basra, as it turned out - avoiding work and enjoying myself with the Media Ops boys but, alas, it wasn’t to be. Unlike the previous 48 hours I was spotted during the morning briefing by none other than the CO, and immediately put to work coordinating a weapons amnesty which he wanted publicised across the town.
“All these buggers have got firearms, Harry,” he told me earnestly. “If we get even a small number of them handed in, the streets will be a little safer for all of us. I know you’ve had experience of this sort of thing in the Balkans, so I’ll leave it to you to get on with. Keep me posted of progress, yes?”
I had indeed had some experience of weapons amnesties, and very nearly lost my life when some idiot handed over an armed anti-personnel mine, but he wasn’t to know that. I nodded with faux enthusiasm and he moved on to some other topic.
Thankfully, putting together a weapons amnesty was significantly easier than I had anticipated, largely due to the eagerness of the Marines for the task. Posters were knocked up in no time and distributed around town by the outgoing patrols. An enormous advertising hoarding - hand-drawn on the back of several map-sheets - was hung up outside the main gate. At my insistence, a large pit made of sandbags was constructed at the same point. I had no desire for anyone to bring any ordnance into the camp, especially not the kind of old, homespun or unstable explosives one finds in such countries, and this way they could be dropped in the pit and destroyed in situ if need be. In many ways, this was precisely the kind of work I excelled at, since it involved giving instructions to dozens of minions while doing precious little myself, and all without leaving the safe environs of the camp. By early afternoon the first weapons had been handed in (mostly Kalashnikov rifles and the like) and I was starting to feel a sense of genuine enthusiasm for the job. With some rapid success if was a fair bet that the amnesty would be widened and, with yours truly at its centre, it had the potential to keep me out of danger for several days at least. But all that changed midway through the afternoon when, with a rumble of tracks, several APCs from 7 Armoured Brigade rolled into the palace grounds. I wandered over to see whether I knew any of the occupants and as luck would have it, one of the officers who disembarked was an old chum from Sandhurst days, who immediately told me that Headquarters 7 Armoured Brigade was moving in, while 42 Commando was moving out, although he didn’t know what our destination was to be. Armed with the news I strode across to the Headquarters building, royally annoyed that I was to be ousted from my relatively new home and the security afforded by the thick stone walls of the palace, presumably to be thrust back into the firing line in some other god-forsaken part of the country.
As with any impending move - and I have seen a
few in my time - the Headquarters erupted into pandemonium. Radios chattered as the troops on patrol were brought back to base, space on vehicles was squabbled over, and I don’t doubt that each man present was quietly wondering how they could smuggle back the various trophies they had purloined from the palace. Our destination, it transpired, was the oilfields west of Basra, near the small town of Rumaylah. This particularly bleak stretch of desert was punctuated by a series of oil pumping stations, or gas/oil separation plants (GOSPs) as they are known in the business. Formerly the home of elements of 16 Air Assault Brigade, 42 Commando was to take over the real estate the following morning. I spent a fretful last evening in the palace, feeling a sense of deep envy of my cavalry brethren and idly wondering if there was some mechanism by which I could conjure up a transfer to their Brigade. (In the event I’m jolly glad I didn’t, since they ended up stuck in Iraq long after the Marines had departed.) The only thing I did manage to achieve was to divest myself of the weapons amnesty, which was picked up by some hapless Intelligence Corps staff officer who seemed utterly terrified at the safety and security implications it posed. I gave him a three-minute verbal brief on my progress to date, handed over what little paperwork there was, and left him sweating.