The Mammoth Book of Fighter Pilots

by Jon E. Lewis

  It struck me later that if Red Section from Hermes had been capping at low level over the sound (where any 801 CAP would have been) instead of at altitude, the Sky Hawks would have had to get through them to get at Ardent. The A-4s would not have tangled with the SHARs so Ardent would not have been hit again and mortally wounded.

  INTERROGATION

  JOHN NICHOL

  John Nichol, a navigator in a RAF Tornado GRI from XV Squadron, was shot down on 17 January 1991 during a low-level attack into Iraq during the Gulf War. Both he and the Tornado’s pilot, John Peters, survived ejection from the aircraft. The pair were then captured by Iraqi soldiers. So began a seven week ordeal of interrogation and torture.

  John Nichol: They dragged me back into the room. Silence. But I sensed at least two people, watching. The chair. That’s what I learned to fear: backless, tubular steel, vinyl seat. When they held you down on that . . .

  My body was tensed for some more of the same, but this time there was a warm, gentle voice. “It’s OK, we don’t want to know any information. Don’t worry.” They took the blindfold off. The voice turned out to be a mild-looking, middle-aged man, somebody’s uncle, a twinkle in his eyes. He offered me food and drink, beside him on the table. I refused. “Look, it’s not drugged, I am eating it.” He asked the Big Four: name, rank, number and date of birth. I told him, that’s permitted. This was a style of interrogation I recognised; I’d been warned about it in our combat survival training.

  Mr Nice was talking to me again, his warm, reasonable tones filling the room, cosy, warming, lapping gently into my thoughts: “We don’t want to know any information. Here is food, here is drink. Don’t worry. Relax.” He started to slip in the odd question. “What squadron are you from, by the way?”

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  “Why can’t you answer that question?”

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  And so the tournament began. He wanted me to say something else. That’s the game we were playing. I’d given him the Big Four, the only other thing I could properly say now was “I cannot answer that question.” If I said anything else, I would be striking up a conversation with him, and he’d have got me. I didn’t want to do that. He kept on, softly, genteelly. “Why did you come to bomb my country?”

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  “Why can’t you answer that question?”

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  “Why have you attacked us? We haven’t attacked you.”

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  This is as difficult as when somebody is beating you and asking you questions. A beating is a very untechnical way of interrogating somebody. Most interrogators will tell you it is not a particularly efficient method of interrogation, because eventually you will start talking in order to stop the pain, and you will tell them what they want to hear, you will say anything, truth or not. The wheedling, the appeals to logic and reason were more subtle, undermining.

  My body was still on fire from the last beating, but he was trying to be nice to me, to draw me in, to form a relationship with me. He was going through a list of things that I could actually answer, and not give any information away at all, and I thought, “I’d love to answer this, I’d love to say something different, but I can’t, I’ve got to keep saying ‘I cannot answer that question.’” It sounded ridiculous, when you kept on repeating it.

  He tried a different approach: “Your friends bombed my family at the airfield tonight. What do you think of that?”

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  “OK . . . Fine. I see you are wearing a chemical warfare suit. Why are you wearing a chemical warfare suit? Is it because you’re dropping chemical weapons on my country?”

  Now I was thinking, “Oh no.” I desperately wanted to deny the accusation, but I could not. If I replied “No”, he’d have got me. He realised from the look on my face that he was onto something; he concentrated on that for a while. “You are dropping chemical weapons onto my country, aren’t you?”

  I blocked again.

  “OK. We will talk further. I know that you cannot answer these questions, but you know that you will answer them. At some point, maybe not today, maybe not tonight . . . tomorrow, maybe, the next day . . . you will talk to me. I know you will talk to me, you know you will talk to me.”

  I was thinking, “I know that as well, mate.” But again, I sat and looked stupid; I looked sad, I looked very sad, I tried to get a bit of sympathy from him, but it didn’t work. He continued with his questioning.

  “OK,” he said, “if you’re not going to talk to me, I’m going to go. Do you want me to go?”

  “No, no!” I thought. “Stay!” But I could not say that. I was thinking, “I know you’re Mr Nice, and you’re not going to hurt me.” But again I replied, “I cannot answer that question.”

  “What do you mean, you cannot answer that question? That’s stupid. All you have to say is you want me to stay, or you don’t want me to stay.” Psychologically, he was trying to get to me. I was desperately trying to fight that as much as I had been trying to fight the pain when they were flogging me.

  In the end he decided he was going to go. He stood behind me chatting with someone in Arabic, discussing my case, planning the rest of the evening’s entertainment. Mr Nasty came in. He was not a particularly aggressive guy, but he had the threats, he was threatening quite openly: “If you do not answer my questions, we will hand you over to other people. They will hurt you, and eventually you will answer them. Why don’t you spare yourself the pain?”

  I think to myself, “Why not spare myself the pain? I know at some point I’m going to tell him what he wants.”

  “We will hurt you. People will beat you. You will be taken to a darkened room, it will not be nice like this, people will not offer you food and the drink that we have.”

  Mr Nice had attempted to persuade me, attempted to make friends with me, attempted to get me to say something else. Now he was putting his trump cards down on the table. He said, “I don’t need to ask you these questions.”

  Now what’s coming?

  “I can tell you that your name is Flt Lt Nichol.”

  That’s no problem, I’ve told him that.

  “I can tell you that you are a navigator.”

  “Shit,” I thought. “How does he know that? That could be a guess though; that’s not a problem.”

  “I can tell you that you are from XV Squadron.”

  Now I really was worried. He knew things about me. Where had he got them from? I had a feeling that he got them from John; he could have got them from a newspaper article, but probably not, it had probably come from John. What have they done to him to get it? The same, or worse? Worse, surely. But what? When will I get it? What will it be like? What did they do?

  “I know that you are from XV Squadron; I know that you are from Bahrain; I know that you fly with your Victor tankers to bomb me.”

  Again this was stuff that he could be guessing, or have read about in the British press. Many people in the Forces had thought that in the run-up to the war the press revealed way too much information that would be of intelligence value to the Iraqis. It was very contentious.

  Now Mr Nice said, “I know that your attack did not work; I know you did not get the bombs off, and that you ditched your bombs in my desert.”

  So now I knew. Now a cold feeling ran right through me. John. I thought, “What the hell has happened to him? Where is he? How is he?” I was worried about him, but even more worried about myself. Deep down, I was glad that whatever had led him to talk had not yet happened to me. The questioning began again; I gave the formulaic reply. But I knew if John had talked, it was only a question of time before I followed suit.

  Mr Nice got bored again: he went away, the pattern formed now. The dry mouth and sudden salivas of fear.

  Still I refused to talk. In the end they gave up. Now the pain was going to start a
gain. Sure enough, they dragged me off to another room, blindfolding me again. I was waiting, tensed, I knew something very unpleasant was going to happen to me very soon.

  They left me standing against a wall in a classic stress position, designed to weaken, to break down resistance. In this position, my forehead was flat against the wall, my feet about twenty inches away from it; I was stretched right up onto my toes, arms handcuffed behind my back. My forehead was supporting my entire bodyweight against the cold surface, a surface flat as purgatory. Every time I tried to move from that position, somebody punched me, whacked me back into it. They left me like that. I tried to move my head, somebody smacked it hard against the wall, a staggering blow. My head must be thicker than I realised, or had I passed out? I tried to move my arms, manacled behind my back now for bloody hours. The handcuffs were still of the ratchet type, tightening automatically if I tried to move. Because of the beating, they were racked up tight to the last notch again, biting into my wrists, a cold, insistent metallic cutting agony. The flesh on the wrists themselves I could feel ballooning up once more over the edges of the cuffs, a two-inch step of swollen flesh, the fingers entirely numb, fluid from the sores flowing out around the steel. My shoulder muscles seized suddenly with the tearing torture of cramp, unbearable, it must be relieved. The arches of my feet were clenched hard with the strain of being on tiptoes, slow rivers of fire burned through the muscle, sinews quivering. Every fibre was shaking now with the impossible effort of maintaining the posture; I had to move, but I knew they were standing, watching, waiting for a twitch, the whip poised, the baton raised. I moved. They beat me to the floor . . .

  They dragged me up, walked me around for a little bit to disorientate me, which wasn’t difficult, as I was in darkness all the time. Now somebody stood me with my back to another wall in another part of the building – only this time my head was not against the wall, I was standing slightly away from it. I could not see, but I could sense somebody to one side. Suddenly, wham! they smashed my head back hard against the wall. Two seconds later, two hours later, impossible to judge, smash! my head crashed off the wall again. Nobody was asking any questions. Crack! I was thinking, “Ask me something, ask me something, at least let me say something, or hit me so I fall unconscious . . .” Crack! This went on – it could have been thirty times, it could have been a thousand times, I have no idea. Nobody asked me anything after this, nothing at all. Now, dazed, stunned like a chicken before its throat is cut, I was worried, I had lost track of how they were going to interrogate me; this was not going by the book any more. They left me. They put me in a cell with John, for the first time, but we knew they would be listening.

  He said, “I’ve told them something.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s no problem.”

  They took me back out of that room, along a corridor, and attached me to the frame of what was obviously a bare iron bedstead. At the other end of the room I could hear someone being questioned. “Zaun,” he said. “My name is Zaun.” I wondered who Zaun was. From his accent, he was obviously American. That meant we were not alone. He had to be a flyer like ourselves.

  They pushed me down onto the bed, but the agony in my wrists and hands, still ratcheted behind my back, made me catapult straight back upright again.

  “What is it?” asked the guard.

  “My arms. My arms.” He uncuffed me, loosened off the ratchets, and cuffed my wrists back together, but this time in front. This was absolute heaven, once the worst of the pain wore off. Utterly exhausted, I curled up on the bedsprings and fell into a dead sleep. It was daylight when I awoke. The guard undid my blindfold. I looked around. I was in what we came to call “the dormitory”. Several other beds, some with mattresses, were dotted around.

  “It’s OK,” said the guard, “I’m a friend. How are you?” Thinking this was another part of the interrogation, or some sort of trick, I shook my head.

  “No,” he said. “Look, I’m trying to help you . . .” He brought out some cigarettes from an inside pocket.

  “Do you need to see a doctor, or anything?” he asked.

  At this point, I desperately, desperately wanted to say something to this guy, whom I christened “Ahmed”. Though horribly scarred, his was the first friendly face in what felt already like a long age, a potential soft patch in a particularly unpleasant experience. His was the first friendly voice. But still, at the back of my mind, was the idea that he might be a more subtle form of quizmaster. He was very good though. He brought me some cold lentil soup, and I drank a tiny amount; but despite not having touched anything for twenty-four hours, I was just not interested in food; there were other things to think about.

  “Where do you come from?” he asked.

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  The heavy brigade suddenly came in; Ahmed had my blindfold back on just in time. They began interrogating me there and then. “Stand up!” Punch, kick. I blocked them with the usual response. They became furious. “You will be sorry, Nichol, you will be sorry.” A few more blows. They left.

  Once they had gone, Ahmed chained me back to the bed by one wrist and took off the blindfold again. My interrogators left me there all that day. And all that day, the air raids came in, the jets screamed overhead, the Triple-A mountings on the roof hammered away, bombs crumped and rattled nearby. During one of these raids, Ahmed was in the room. A bomb went off right next to the building we were in. He looked out of the window, and then said, casually, “Someone has just been killed down there,” and he pointed. I fell asleep again in the afternoon.

  Later, still chained to the bed, a heavy kick in the ribs woke me: “What’s your name? Rank? Number?”

  “8204846.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  “You will be sorry, you know that, don’t you, Nichol?”

  “I cannot answer that question.”

  “We will come back for you soon. You will be sorry.”

  I know I’m going to be sorry. I’m already bloody sorry.

  The psychological terror, the psychological torture, is just as great as the physical torture. You are shit-scared. You desperately want him to come and get you, as soon as possible, to get it over with, so that you can break, so that you can tell him something. But you haven’t suffered enough yet, they haven’t done enough to you yet to tell them anything. You haven’t suffered enough to let anyone down, you haven’t suffered enough to let yourself down; but you do want it to be over, to reach an end.

  In the evening they came for me. They unshackled me, put the blindfold on, hauled me upright, dragged me down the stairs, round the streets, back into the interrogation centre; the familiar journey, almost routine by now. The chair: they threw me down into it. One guy was holding my arm on one side, one on the other. I knew in my heart of hearts that this was the time, I knew that it was going to get really rough now.

  I was sitting with the solid fist of my own fear in my stomach.

  “What squadron are you from?”

  “I cannot answer that . . .”

  Bang! somebody punched me in the face. Blood came pouring out of my face onto my lap, dripping. I could feel it warm on my thighs. On my lower half, I was wearing a flying-suit, a chemical-warfare suit, long-johns underneath all that, but I could still feel the blood dripping warm onto the upper part of my legs. Someone was hitting me in the face, over and over again. Question. Then somebody standing just to one side hit me hard across the skull with a solid piece of wood. Thwack! My head rang to the blow like some kind of bell. There were brilliant aching lights flashing behind the blindfold. You really do see stars. I was in the middle of the Milky Way. Question.

  “I cannot answer . . .” A kick in the stomach – how he got to my stomach I don’t know, they were still holding me down on the chair. I fell over to one side in the chair, my gorge rising; they dragged me up by the hair. Question.

  “I cannot . . .” Whack! Someone punched me aga
in, someone hit me with the wood, dazzling bright lights and the sudden downward spiral into blackness. Now I was disorientated, my brain was really starting to shut down, but still I thought, “It’s going to take more than this, it’s going to take more than this. I’m not breaking down without good cause.” Somebody dragged my boot off, tearing it away with a furious wrench. “What on earth? What are they going to do to me now?” Whack! A plastic pipe filled with something hard hit me across the shins. A biting agony across the shins, on and on, biting. Question.

  And now, somebody grabs the hair at the nape of my neck, and begins stuffing tissue-paper down the back of my T-shirt. That is appalling. This is terrifying now. I am sitting in a darkened room in the middle of enemy territory, and somebody has just stuffed tissue-paper down the back of my neck. “What are they doing that for?” I know straightaway what they are doing that for, I can imagine only too well. “Shit, they are going to set me on fire!” Now I really want him to ask me another question, I am sorry, I want to say something, I want to tell him something, anything. But he doesn’t ask me a question. He just sets fire to the paper.

  I throw my head violently from side to side, to try to escape from the burning, to try to shake the tissue-paper clear of my neck. They are still whacking my shins. Quite soon, mercifully soon, somebody behind me slaps out the flames.

  “What squadron are you from?”

  “Fifteen.”

  I had had enough.

  APPENDIX I:

  GERMAN WAR BIRDS

  ANTON H.G. FOKKER

  Fokker, a Dutchman, founded the Fokker aircraft factory at Schwerin in Germany in 1913, which turned over to the making of war planes for the German military with the commencement of World War I in 1914. A year later he developed the interrupter gear which allowed a machine gun to fire through the revolving propeller blades of a fighter. In this extract from his memoirs he recalls the personalities of Germany’s most legendary WWI aces, Richthofen, Boelcke and Immelmann.