by Andy McNab
I was devastated at the loss of so much money, but as one door closed, another door opened. Two weeks later a money-making opportunity presented itself.
A scaley attached to the Regiment during the time it was operating in the jungles of Borneo now owned a hotel on San Pedro, an island far out in the keys. He had I kept in contact with F Troop and telephoned one day to say that although San Pedro was a very beautiful place, what was holding the place back as a tourist trap was the fact that the water was sulfurous' However, it had just been discovered that under the layer of lime was the world's supply of freshwater.
"I can't afford to get outside contractors to bore down to it because of the expense of bringing all the machinery over," the ex-scaley said.
"You don't know anybody handy with explosives, do you?"
Just possibly.
Des, Solid Shot, and I went down to the stores and found some old-fashioned engineer's beehive charges, used to make craters in runways. They were rusting and flaking, but we hoped they would do the business, penetrate the lime, expose the freshwater, and give us all a payday. One Friday night the three of us boarded a Gemini inflatable with a Yamaha engine on the back, laden with explosives and fuel, a floating bomb. We got on the river by the airport camp and then navigated down to the coast.
San Pedro was so far away it wasn't visible from the mainland.
For navigation we had just an ordinary 1 in 50,000 tourist map; there was this little speck in the middle of the Caribbean that was San Pedro, and we just took a bearing and off we went.
After a few hours we passed a ship en route to Belize City. The captain hailed us and asked if we were all right. "No problems." We waved and smiled, trying to cover the beehives and firing cable. We must have looked like terrorists.
"Where are you going?"
"San Pedro."
He threw his hands in the air and went back into the wheelhouse.
The first place we were trying to find with our map and Silva compass was called Hick's Island. From there we took another bearing, and four hours later, with just one fuel bladder left, we motored into San Pedro.
We spotted a body lying in a hammock and said we wanted to find the main quay, which was near the airstrip.
"Well, man," she said, "it's like further up there. Nice to see you guys, you know, like-wow." She had a lovely tattoo of a butterfly on her ankle; pity she was in her late fifties and beaten half to death by the sun.
It was a beautiful island; most of the inhabitants were Americans seeking an alternative lifestyle. The scaley was a little lock with a big white bushy beard. He looked really excited to see us-or maybe it was the two bottles of Famous Grouse we handed over.
We started digging the next day. We had to go down about twelve to fifteen feet to reach the lime layer, but raw materials were at a premium on the island. There weren't any boards or corrugated iron sheets to put up around the sand, and every time we dug down, it caved in. We finally got down to about two foot above the lime, rigged up the beehive charge, and Des initiated it.
It was a big occasion. All the hippies had gathered around to watch the clever Brits reach down to the first freshwater they'd ever seen on the island. That only made it even more embarrassing when the charge didn't penetrate. We tried again, and then we ran out of explosives.
"I've heard sulfurous water is good for you." I beamed at the ex-scaley.
"Maybe you could market the place as a spa?"
We had three days walking around the hotel making excuses; then we headed back to the mainland with our tails between our legs. No water, no money.
In the jungle even a simple cut can become a serious problem.
Fungi, parasites, and exotic diseases battle to prevent your body from healing. Fat Boy went out on a patrol and came back in shit state.
He'd gone down with bilharzia and a liver infection and looked like a ghost.
He was in the military hospital for a long time.
Soon after the San Pedro trip I went back on the border and got an injury on my knee; within days the joint had swollen up like a football covered in scabby zits.
When I bent my knee, pus oozed out, and I could hear the joints creak.
Before long I had trouble moving at all, and had to be casevacked out.
It was nearly Christmas, and I thought, This is all rather nice, I'll be home in time for the Morecambe and Wise show.
Casualties had to be escorted back, and I was told that a nurse was being sent over from Woolwich hospital to come and get me. In my mind I had a vision of a Bo Derek look-alike holding my hand and soothing my brow all the way to Washington and then on to the UK. By the time we got to Woolwich, I had us practically engaged.
I packed my kit and was all ready to go on the Wednesday night flight. I was lying on my bed when the nurse arrived and was introduced to me. Bo had aged a lot-and lost a lot of hair and grown a big mustache and beer belly. There wasn't much of a sense of humor about Nigel either. I got the feeling he belonged to one of those end-of-the-world-is-nigh sects and would retire to San Pedro.
I spent two or three days at Woolwich hospital but was back in Hereford in time for turkey and Christmas pud. Not long after that, I heard that my offer had been accepted on a house in Hereford; at last I was a fullyfledged homeowning yuppie. All I needed now was ten thousand more empty Coke bottles and I'd be able to buy something to sit on. it was a two-up, two-down thing, one of those new Westbury-type houses.
The asking price was twenty-five grand, but. I was feeling really good because, the big-time negotiator, I'd got it down to twenty-four and a half.
The place was very basic, and I didn't have the time or money to do anything about it. To save on bills, I didn't have the gas reconnected, and boiled water for food with a hexy burner sitting in the stainless steel sink. The kettle came from my room in the block.
Next payday I got a microwave, so anything that went ping after forty-five seconds, I'd be eating it. I got a telly, then a small stereo, and that was about it, the ultimate singley's place: bare walls, a chair, a bed, and a china ornament of a cat the previous owner had left on the mantelpiece.
The garden was overgrown, and I didn't have a lawn mower or tools; I had to borrow them from a friend who lived around the corner. I bunged all my washing in the laundry at camp. I had my Sunday dinners at work as well, or I'd go down to the pub that put out trays of sausages and clear them out. Otherwise it was Chinese takeaways all the way, collected from the town in my decrepit Renault 5. However, I was happy. I was one of Thatcher's children.
Roundabout Christmas time I got talking in a bar one night with a girl called Fiona. The conversation came around to where we both lived.
"I've bought a house near the camp," I said, naming the road.
"Number four."
"I don't believe it!" she laughed. "I live at number two. You must be my next door neighbor!"
She told me that she came from Hampshire. She'd moved up to Hereford to be with her partner, but the relationship hadn't worked out. She didn't want to go home, so she rented the house and was working in the town.
She was tall, with long brown hair, and very confident. We really enjoyed each other's company and started going out. I thought, This is good news-a new house, a microwave, and now a new girlfriend. What more could I need? But no sooner had we got together than it w'as announced that the squadron was going to Africa.
The chief opposition force to the apartheid regime in South Africa was the African National Congress. It had been crippled by the arrest of Nelson Mandela and his colleagues in the early sixties but revived after the Soweto riots in 1976. Each time the government banned a moderate black opposition group, the A.N.C's membership swelled. In 1980 it began a successful bombing campaign, attacking plants manufacturing oil from coal.
In December 1982 the South African military raided Lesotho and killed forty-two members of the A.N.C in Maseru. In May 1983 a car bomb outside the Ministry of Defense in Pretoria killed nineteen peo
ple and injured over two hundred, including many black civilians. The bombing campaign increased after the 1984-86 riots.
There were scores of attacks throughout South Africa, killing many people.
Then, in June 1985, South African forces carried out a raid on Gaborone, the capital of Botswana. Several ral homes were raided, and twelve men, allegedly A.N.C members, were killed in their sleep. The South African government alleged that Botswana territory was used by A.N.C guerrillas to launch attacks inside South Africa, including recent mine blasts that had killed white farmers near the border. Botswana rejected the claims, arguing that it did its utmost to prevent A.N.C military activities inside its territory.
Botswana appealed to the British for help; the appeal was approved by Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe and a. Regiment squadron of eighty men was to be sent to train Botswana's soldiers to defend their country against border raids by Big Brother. Selected soldiers from the BDF (Botswana Defense Force) would be given special training, including techniques of aggressive counterattack to neutralize South African raiding parties. We were told the training would take place in the north of the country, well away from the South African border.
We would not be involved in any contact with the S.A.D.F (South African Defense Force).
The Botswana Defense Force's mobility was shortly to be enhanced by the arrival of a number of helicopters to be provided by the U.S under a ten-million-dollar military aid program. The U.S was also providing special training in counter intelligence techniques to the Botswana security forces to offset penetration by South African agents; the skills we taught them would also make it easier for the BDF to detect any counterinfiltration by A.N.C guerrillas.
We finished our planning and preparation for the job.
Everything, we were told, was TS (top secret). The squadron would be flying from Brize Norton to Kenya, because that was not an unusual troop movement. From there we'd all be splitting off into little groups, making our way into Botswana by different timings and routes.
We got to Kenya and split up. Six of us stayed in the country for a while; others were going off to other African countries for a few days before starting to filter into Botswana to our squadron RP. Some of the blokes went off on safaris while they were biding their time; I mooched around with Ben, a jock who'd just joined the squadron. We went to a place called the Carnivore, a big meat-eating place where you could eat as much meat as you wanted for about tuppence. I stuffed myself and got food poisoning and had to spend the next two days in bed.
The six of us finally got on a plane to Zaire. We spent a little time mooching around there, then flew to Zambia. The country was chockablock with Russians.
They all looked like bad Elvis impersonators from the seventies, with greased-back hair, sideburns three-quarters of the way down the face, and unfashionable suits and plastic shoes.
We wandered around Zambia departures looking at the Russians, and the Russians were looking at us. They knew who we were, and we knew who they were. The official cover story for us was that we were a seven-aside rugby team on tour. Nobody questioned us about it, which was probably just as well. I could have been hit over the head with a rugby ball at that time and I wouldn't have had a clue what it was.
And the seven-aside story was a bit dodgy as well, seeing as there were only six of us.
We ended up sharing a small propeller aircraft with three or four Russian "officials" and a Russian pop music band that was ostensibly traveling around all the military units. The drummer had fallen straight off the cover of the Woodstock album, dressed in flared loons, a headband, and a Cat Stevens T-shirt. judging by the way he was air-drumming on the magazine on his lap, he was no more a drummer than I was JPR Williams.
We eventually got to a small metal airstrip in the middle of Botswana. A few blokes from the squadron were already there; some of them, I could see, were nursing injuries. The squadron O.C and Fraser turned u;
Fraser p had broken his collarbone and was walking around with his arm in a sling.
We got in some vehicle and went off to the squadron RP, which-inevitably-was an aircraft hangar.
Over the next couple of days the rest of the blokes trickled in from all over the place. Some came in from Zimbabwe and were in a right state.
They'd had a day out in the sun, and Toby, better known as Slaphead, having been bald since he was aged about nine, had gone up on the roof of the hotel and fallen asleep. The front half of his body was totally burned, and his face and forehead were already starting to peel.
While we were waiting, the ice-cream boys organized an Islander turbo aircraft that could take seven of us at a squeeze, and off we went jumping. We wanted to learn infiltration techniques in that part of the world, going in against not too sophisticated radars. I jumped my arse i off over the next three or four days, getting back into the swing of free fall, going up to twelve grand, leaping out and just basically having fun.
On one particular jump I was going out as a "floater."
An Islander has only small doors, which meant that everybody couldn't exit at the same time. We were only jumping at twelve grand, so it was important to get all seven of us going off at the same time.
The technique was for various floaters to climb outside the aircraft and hold on to whatever bits and pieces they could.
I was rear floater, which should have entailed putting my left hand onto the left-hand side of the door, wedging my left foot against the bottom corner of the doorframe and then swinging out and holding on with my right hand to a bit of fuselage. However, I screwed up.
As I swung out, I lost my footing and fell, going straight into free fall long before the planned exit. To make matters worse, I was over the town.
There was no way I was going to be able to track to get the distance to reach the DZ, so I pulled quite high, hoping I'd be able to use the canopy to go in. With the wind behind me the canopy gave about twenty-five knots, but I was losing too much elevation. Soon I would have to turn back into wind to land. I scanned the ground, trying to sort myself out. There seemed to be nothing below but high-voltage pylons and cars speeding along the roads, then masses of people running out of buildings to look at this little thing dangling from a big blue canopy.
I just managed to clear a line of pylons and hit the street, landing between cars. It was a really bad landing; I hit my arse hard, and the canopy enveloped me. Immediately hundreds of little hands started tugging at the fabric, shouting and laughing joyously. I had visions of my parachute being ripped to shreds and shouted the first thing that came into my head.
"Okey-dokey!"
A hundred voices replied, "Okey-dokey! Okey-dokey! " I rolled the canopy up and sat at the roadside, chatting to all my new friends, while I waited for a wagon to come and pick me up.
"Okey-dokey?"
"Okey-dokey!"
The conversation was still going when the vehicle arrived, and for days after that all anybody would say to me was "Okey-dokey!"
We moved to the camp where we were going to be based. We got our camp beds or air beds out, spread out our sleeping bags, and made our own little world. The camp was a group of old, run-down buildings.
Very much like everything else in Africa, the walls had holes in them and the plaster was coming away. We rigged up some lights to the generator, and that meant we could read. Fiona had bought me a book called The Grail Romances, I'd read Holy Blood, Holy Grail just to give me enough information to give Frank Collins a hard time about the religion and had ended up really gripped by medieval history. Poor Fiona had trooped around hundreds of churches, forts, and motte-and-bailey castles with me.
They'd been used to a lot of South African incursions in the area.
Basically the S.A.D.F would come out of South Africa, chuck a left, and go up into Angola along the Caprivi strip. There was quite a lot of attention initially when we arrived; people were unsure of what we were and who we were. To these villagers, if there was a white eye and a gun, it meant a
South African.
After a while we'd wake up in the mornings and there'd be hundreds and hundreds of villagers along the fence line. They'd turned up for freebies. Now and again I gave them the sweets out of the compo rations and a can of tuna or something. They seemed quite desperate, as if it was starvation stakes; there were lots of shiny cans everywhere, and they wanted them.
Then, of all things, an ice-cream van turned up one day. It was just like Blackpool, with the old ding-dong chimes. He must have traveled at least a hundred miles to get there; perhaps he'd heard that 7 Troop was in town.
We spent a week planning and preparing. A character called Gilbert, the snake man, was brought in to show us all the different types of snakes-the ones that were poisonous and the ones that weren't.
"There are two ways of dealing with a bite," he said.
"The first is to dress the wound and try to get all antidote. The second is to lie very still in your sleeping bag and wait for death."
We were standing around in a circle while this boy brought different snakes out of their bags. All of a sudden a particularly mean-looking fucker with a deep hatred of men in shorts and flip-flops hurled itself out of Gilbert's hands and was off, spitting venom in all directions.
Within seconds all the rough-tough S.A.S men were hanging off trees and vehicles or sprinting toward the perimeter fence.. This was one very pissed-off snake; when it couldn't find a man to attack, it started to eat one of the vehicles, trying to sink its fangs into the tires.
I had no idea how it was recaptured and put back in its bag; my view was a bit restricted from the roof of the ice-cream van a hundred meters away.
The locals were starting to pester us good style now. It happened almost every time we went into a place where Westerners had been working; people would be expecting us to give them stuff, and if we didn't, they hassled and poked. They were given so much aid from so many sources that in the end it wasn't something that they were grateful for; it was just something that they expected as of right.