Soldier A: Behind Iraqi Lines

by Shaun Clarke

  Hailsham thought about it for a moment. Putting the binoculars back to his eyes, he studied the target once more. Removing the binoculars and night-vision goggles, he rubbed his tired eyes.

  ‘What about the automatic early-warning sensors on those observation towers?’

  Red sighed. ‘The Strike Eagles’ll be preceded by an EA-6B Prowler. Its avionic system includes five pods containing jamming transmitters. They fire streams of radio waves and electrons on seven different frequencies. The Prowler’s wingtips pick up the target’s radar waves and feed them into a computer that gives the frequency info needed for the jamming. One Prowler’s enough to jam all the radars on that missile site. Once they’re jammed, we can pinpoint the targets with our laser pistols.’ When Johnny Boy whistled with admiration, Red grinned triumphantly. ‘Should I get on the SATCOM?’

  ‘The wonders of science,’ Hailsham said. ‘Yes, get on the SATCOM.’

  As Red was relaying his request and grid references back to Saudi Arabia via the SATCOM system in the charge of Paddy Clarke, Hailsham crawled along his line of widely spaced men, stopping at the ones with portable laser designators to tell them which targets he wanted pinpointed once the Prowler had passed over and jammed the enemy radar. On the way back he stopped to have a few words with the men on the GPMGs and mortars, telling them not to use them unless fired at. By the time he returned to Master-Sergeant Polanski, the American had finished his transmission and was holding his thumb up.

  ‘They’ll be here in no time at all, Major. Just sit back and relax.’

  ‘Thank you for the suggestion, Master-Sergeant. I might just do that.’

  Reaching his original position, Hailsham rolled onto his stomach and again examined the missile site through his binoculars. In the eerie blue glow of his night-vision goggles, he saw that the Scuds, just recently wheeled out of the hangars on their mobile platforms, were being raised to an elevation suitable for long-range firing. Many armed guards and engineers were gathering around them.

  ‘I think we got here just in time,’ he said to Red. ‘It looks like they plan to launch those things later tonight, or perhaps tomorrow at dawn. Another surprise attack.’

  ‘More of a surprise,’ Red said, ‘since the Israelis think the Scud attacks have ended. Wouldn’t they get a shock!’

  ‘Let’s hope they won’t,’ Hailsham said.

  ‘You can depend on the good old US of A. Those planes will be here in no time.’

  ‘I live by faith,’ Hailsham said.

  Red rolled over and grinned at Johnny Boy, who was lying on his back with his hands behind his head and his long legs crossed. The kid was only 24 and looked as cocky as they come, but as Red had already found out, he had nerves of steel, initiative and a lot of guts. Red liked the Brits generally, but Johnny Boy really amused him. He was like Red had been when he first joined the Marines – bright, straightforward, easily bored, in desperate need of adventure and excitement, willing to take chances for it. When he looked at the trooper, Red was looking deep in the mirror.

  ‘Hey, kid,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Red, what is it?’

  ‘How long have you been in the Army?’

  ‘You mean the Regiment? The SAS?’

  ‘No, I mean the Army – in total.’

  ‘Three years in the Army – one with the SAS.’

  ‘What made you join?’

  ‘Come on, Red, you know that. What the fuck made you join?’

  Red laughed and slapped the kid’s shoulder. ‘Kid,’ he said, ‘you got no respect. That’s court-martial language. But you’re right, we both know why. Fun and games, right?’

  ‘That sums it up, Red.’

  ‘Some soldiers have better motives, kid.’

  ‘Each to his own, Red.’

  ‘You been in Belfast or Antrim?’

  ‘Both,’ Johnny Boy replied. ‘Don’t tell me you disapprove, Red. I hate American Irishmen.’

  ‘What did you do over there, kid?’

  ‘Not much that I enjoyed. I didn’t have a motorbike then, and it rained all the time. Also, it was full of people like Sergeant Clarke, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Hey, knock it off!’ Paddy said.

  ‘Sorry, Sarge,’ the trooper replied. ‘I thought all Irishmen had wax in their unwashed ears and that you wouldn’t hear me.’

  ‘I heard you all right. It’s hard to ignore someone farting. One more verbal fart like that and your handsome mug’ll look like a pomegranate. That’s blood-red, for your info.’

  ‘Hear you loud and clear, Sergeant.’

  ‘Stop interrupting,’ Red said to Paddy. ‘I’m trying to talk to the kid, here. Where do you come from, Johnny Boy? I mean, where were you born and raised?’

  ‘England.’

  ‘I know that, kid! Where?’

  ‘The only place worth living in that country.’

  ‘You mean London?’

  ‘Right. Crouch End. That’s in North London, Red. It’s near Finsbury Park, where a lot of Sambos and Paddies have their beds, but I didn’t mind that.’

  ‘Johnny Boy!’ Paddy exclaimed.

  ‘Sorry, Paddy,’ Johnny Boy said. ‘A mere slip of the tongue in the night. I need my sleep, don’t you know.’

  ‘Are you working-class, kid?’ asked the American.

  ‘Sergeant Clarke is working-class …’

  ‘Fuck you, Trooper!’

  ‘… but I’m middle-class, English, and proud of it. My dad’s an interior decorator …’

  ‘He means a painter and decorator,’ Paddy clarified helpfully.

  ‘… and my mother runs the wallpaper shop and does my Dad’s accounts. They’re pretty decent, my parents.’

  ‘So why did you join the Army?’ Red asked, always eager for facts.

  ‘Because my home life, though decent, was fart-boring and I couldn’t find work. So here I am, Red.’

  ‘You’re a good kid,’ Red said, thinking of his own kids back at home and feeling a little emotional. ‘You’re a bit on the wild side, I reckon, but otherwise you’re OK.’

  ‘Thanks, Red, so are you. Not bad for a Yank.’

  ‘Read you loud and clear, kid.’

  The bullshit continued for another thirty minutes or so until it was interrupted by Major Hailsham, who quietly said, ‘There’s the plane.’

  The Prowler was high overhead, its lights shining like two stars, its grey underside laden with five pods that made it look like a great pregnant bird. It came no lower, not needing to risk low altitude, but it flew directly over the missile site, then turned around to come back again. Hailsham picked up his binoculars and studied the missile site. The guards in the observation towers were pointing up at the Prowler. Yet they were unconcerned. It was too high up for an attack plane. The guards watched it as it circled back over the site and then returned to where it had come from. When they saw that it was definitely leaving, they relaxed again.

  ‘Is that it?’ Hailsham asked.

  Red was back on the SATCOM, just finishing his transmission. He faced Hailsham and stuck his thumb up in the air. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘The Iraqi radar is jammed. The Strike Eagles were flying in just behind it and are practically here. Start painting your targets.’

  Johnny Boy removed his hands from behind his head, uncrossed his long legs, sat up and turned to the front. ‘I’ve got to see this,’ he said.

  Using the PRC 319, Hailsham contacted the groups with the portable laser designators and told them to illuminate their selected targets for the incoming aircraft. Within minutes the various designators had ‘warmed’ or ‘painted’ their targets with a spot of intense light that could be picked up by the aircraft and would enable their missiles and bombs to be directed to the targets with incredible accuracy.

  The flight of Strike Eagles arrived within minutes and came in low and fast, looking less fat-bellied than the Prowler, but more terrifying, with high twin fins, F100-PW-220 turbofan Pratt & Whitney jets, and a payload of AIM-9L Sidewin
ders, AIM-74 Sparrows and M61A1 20mm rotary cannons. Sweeping down and across the desert with awesome precision, one after the other, creating a godalmighty roar, they released two missiles at a time, raked the site with their cannons, levelled out and were ascending even before their missiles had struck home. Hitting their targets with shocking violence, the missiles made the ground erupt, spewing earth, sand and smoke, the latter streaked with yellow flames, and blowing the buildings apart with a cataclysmic, deafening fury.

  The command posts were blown apart, the great radar bowls buckled, the supply dumps burst into flames, and the observation towers, also torn apart by the cannons, eventually collapsed, with men hurtling down, screaming, through the falling debris. Other men suffered worse, set ablaze and burning alive, running to and fro like balls of fire while their world exploded around them.

  The Strike Eagles flew away, practically disappeared, returned, came back down with missiles searing and cannons thundering, then shot away again. The steel fences melted. Another building went up in flames. More burning men were screaming in the smoke that billowed up, black as oil, like heavy curtains, to meet the cascading sand. The Strike Eagles made a final run, getting rid of their payloads, and the devastation, as spectacular as it was hideous, was finally complete.

  When the Strike Eagles saluted and flew away, back to base, the once widely spread, heavily guarded missile complex had been reduced to a grim pile of blazing, smoking rubble piled up around a few skeletal buildings, smouldering corpses and some shocked, dazed survivors.

  ‘Let’s bug out,’ Hailsham said. He stood up and used hand signals to notify the other men. The hand signals were passed along the long line and the men started moving out.

  A great mushroom cloud of exploded sand and smoke was spreading over the blazing, smouldering ruins of the missile site as Hailsham gratefully turned his back to it.

  ‘Impressive, right?’ Red asked with a broad, boyish grin.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Major Hailsham said.

  ‘Brilliant!’ Johnny Boy exclaimed excitedly. ‘Like a fucking great light show. Knocked ’em for six, Red!’

  ‘We hit it right on the nose, kid.’

  The stench of scorched flesh and burning fuel was being carried on the breeze as the squadron legged it back across the desert floor to the vehicles parked half a mile away. Hailsham stood up in his Pink Panther, beside his driver, Paddy Clarke, about to give the hand signal, when a column of sand obscuring the stars to the west drew his attention.

  ‘What …?’

  ‘Fucking Iraqis!’ Johnny Boy exclaimed as his Honda motorbike roared into life. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  Hailsham dropped his hand, clearly illuminated in the moonlight, as Paddy switched on the ignition and revved up the engine. The other vehicles did the same, one driver hearing the other, then they all raced away from the missile site with a discordant roaring.

  The wheels of their vehicles churned up more sand, advertising their whereabouts.

  Johnny Boy cut away from the column and headed directly towards the advancing Iraqi trucks.

  Red looked on in disbelief as the LSV he was in, driven by an SAS Trooper, raced on ahead.

  ‘What the fuck’s he doing?’ he asked the driver.

  ‘Just causing some aggro,’ the driver said, not fazed in the slightest.

  Johnny Boy roared straight at the advancing Iraqi trucks on his motorbike, his headlamp turned off, and unholstered his Browning with one hand while holding the handlebars with the other.

  He kept racing towards the column, hardly noticed in the darkness, and then turned sharp right, cutting across the oncoming trucks, and emptied his 13 rounds into the lights and windscreens he passed. Some of the lights went out. He heard glass shattering. One of the trucks careered sideways and crashed into another as Johnny Boy turned left, letting the Iraqi trucks pass him, and circled to come back up their rear.

  Holstering his hand gun, he undipped a phosphorus grenade. He let go of the handlebars, unpinned the grenade before the handlebars started shaking, then grabbed them again with his free hand and lobbed the grenade straight into the rear of the truck in front of him.

  He again turned sharply to the right and was roaring away, out of range, when the grenade exploded in the back of the truck, in the very laps of the troops, blowing the canvas covering off and causing jagged fingers of white flame and streams of phosphorus fireflies to fan out through the darkness as the flying canvas burst into flames and fell smoking to earth.

  The truck veered sideways and, as the first had done, smashed into another one.

  Johnny Boy was already racing back to his own column when the Iraqis in the remaining trucks opened fire with their small arms. The bullets, which were not aimed at him, as he was well out to the side and still practically invisible, whistled dangerously close to him as he turned in and headed back to his mates.

  ‘Nice one, Johnny!’ he whispered.

  Hailsham saw the colliding trucks, the grenade explosion and burning canvas, but also saw that the other trucks were still in pursuit. Not wanting a long chase, as this limited the use of fire-power, he used hand signals, which were passed from one vehicle to another, to tell the men to form the Pink Panthers and LSVs into a circular laager. They did so and then unwrapped their arsenal of GPMGs, MILANs, Stingers, 60mm LAWs, 81mm mortars and small arms just as Johnny Boy came roaring out of the moonlit plain and skidded to a halt between Major Hailsham and US Master-Sergeant Polanski.

  The trooper swung his leg off the motorbike, propped it up on its support, unslung his M16 from his shoulder and went to join Red, who was crouched down behind his LSV, about to take aim with his own M16.

  ‘I caused a bit of confusion out there,’ Johnny Boy said, trying not to sound too proud.

  ‘It’s a pity you didn’t stop ’em,’ Red said. ‘Here they come, kid.’

  The Iraqi trucks, all lights blazing, came out of an immense cloud of sand created by their own wheels. They stopped within rifle range, disgorging their troops, just as Hailsham dropped his right hand and the SAS opened fire. The GPMGs roared relentlessly as the MILANs, Stingers, LAWs and mortars backblasted, sending their bombs raining down on the Iraqi trucks with devastating results. More shooting flames and boiling smoke. At least two trucks exploded. The Iraqi troops ran left and right, escaping the explosions, spreading out to return the fire, as the SAS opened up with their small arms and caused more devastation. More Iraqis screamed and fell, but the others remained courageous, spreading out and setting up their own mortars in the midst of that withering fire. Their mortars spewed flame and smoke and then the first shells exploded.

  Hailsham was deafened, then covered in showering sand. When his ears cleared and his vision returned, he looked up from where he lay and saw a blackened shell hole in the ground just in front of Red’s LSV, positioned beside Hailsham’s Pink Panther. Red and Johnny Boy were OK, still behind the LSV, but the front of the vehicle had been badly damaged and its tyres had burst into flames. Sand was raining down everywhere. Dense smoke obscured the view. Hailsham clambered back to his feet, saw his damaged SLR, unholstered his Browning and walked up to Red. The American and the young trooper were firing their M16s. Hailsham was about to say something – he didn’t know quite what – when a wave of nausea assailed him and he had to sit down again.

  ‘Are you OK, boss?’ Paddy asked. ‘That exploding mortar shell knocked you for six.’

  ‘A little dizzy,’ Hailsham said. ‘What’s happening, Paddy?’

  ‘We’ve held them back, boss, but they’re a stubborn bunch of bastards. They’re digging in there. We’ve knocked out all their trucks and taken out a lot of men, but the ones left aren’t going to let us go. You’ve got to admire them, boss.’

  ‘This is no time for admiration, Paddy. Do you think we can hold here?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘No,’ Red said, crawling up on his hands and knees, though with his M16 held in one hand and his lips grimly set. ‘We
may have knocked out their trucks and downed a lot of their men, but one of those left still has a radio and is using it right now. You know what that means, Major? More Iraqi troops nearby. I say we shoot and scoot, Major, before the others get here. We won’t stand a prayer otherwise.’

  ‘OK, gentlemen, let’s go.’

  Hailsham’s head had cleared and he stood up again. ‘Relay the message to everyone,’ he said to Paddy. ‘Tell them we’re bugging out. Tell them not to wait for further orders – they’re to take off right now. They all know where the FOB is and they’ve got to get back under their own steam. OK, let’s get to it.’

  Paddy rushed around the laager, passing on Hailsham’s message, as Hailsham clambered into his Pink Panther, smacking an ear to clear it, even as more Iraqi mortar shells exploded nearby.

  ‘What about me?’ Red said, ducking as exploding sand spewed over him. ‘My LSV’s in the wrecker’s yard.’

  ‘Come with me,’ Johnny Boy offered. ‘On the back of my bike. Have yourself an adventure.’

  Red glanced at Hailsham.

  ‘Why not?’ Hailsham said. ‘Most of the Pink Panthers, including mine, are full up – and Willoughby’s reliable.’

  ‘Hi, ho!’ Red said. He climbed up on the motorbike behind Johnny Boy, just as Paddy returned from the far side of the laager. Paddy took the driving seat of the Pink Panther and looked directly at Hailsham.

  ‘Yes, boss?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hailsham said.

  Paddy put his foot down and the Pink Panther roared into life, shooting out from the circular laager and cutting a track through the sand. The other vehicles did the same, breaking away one by one, following Hailsham across the flat plain, away from the Iraqis. As the latter had no working trucks left, since most were in flames, they could only offer a fusillade of small-arms fire that did little damage.

  One final Iraqi mortar shell, however, fired by the bloody fingers of a wounded militiaman, looped down to the rear of the Pink Panthers and LSVs that were making their escape across the desert. It exploded just as Johnny Boy was roaring past on his motorbike with Red Polanski sitting on the back, a great smile on his sunburnt face.