Soldier A: Behind Iraqi Lines

by Shaun Clarke

  Even as the shot trooper spasmed violently and died, the other SAS vehicles were breaking off in opposite directions, weaving between the explosions and the spitting, bullet-riddled sand, to circle back and form a defensive laager further away from the ridge. Once in semicircular formation, the men jumped out of the vehicles, taking cover behind them, in some instances dragging down the heavy GPMGs in order to mount them on tripods on the desert floor and give the Iraqis as good as they were getting.

  ‘Get those mortars set up!’ Hailsham bawled, practically rolling backwards out of his Pink Panther to fall to the sand and pick himself up again. ‘I want that whole ridge blown to hell. Corporal Clarke,’ he said to Paddy, who was already firing his SLR, ‘I want you to take some men and bug out south of here, then circle west and come back under cover of that slight incline to our right to do as much damage as you can manage from that angle. Take a GPMG.’

  ‘Right, boss,’ Paddy said.

  The ground roared and erupted at the other side of the Pink Panther, showering Hailsham and those around him.

  ‘Corporal McGregor,’ Hailsham called to Jock, who was firing bursts from his M16, ‘I want you to do the same, but circle east until you’re parallel with Paddy. I want your team to take a GPMG as well.’

  ‘Right, boss. Will do.’

  ‘Get going, then.’ As Paddy and Jock crawled away, trying to avoid the spitting bullets and mortar explosions, Hailsham glanced at Danny, also firing his SLR, then turned to Ricketts, saying, ‘Well, we certainly walked into this one. How on earth do we get out?’

  Casting his gaze beyond the overturned LSV and the two lifeless SAS troopers spread-eagled near it, Ricketts saw that the irregular ridge was rendering the Iraqis practically invisible. Their mortars were set up slightly down the slope behind the ridge and most of the men using small arms were lying behind the ledge of the rim, only raising their heads above it long enough to fire and duck down again. It was indeed possible that Jock and Paddy would be able to pick some off from the side, but most of them would still be out of sight, firing with impunity unless taken out by SAS mortars.

  As if to help Hailsham and Ricketts with their sombre deliberations, the SAS mortar teams started firing from just behind them, lobbing their shells high in order to let them fall behind the ridge. This they did, churning up spirals of sand that rose above the ridge, hopefully signifying that damage had been inflicted on the Iraqis, though that could not be verified.

  Ricketts glanced east and west to see Jock and Paddy, each trailing a three-man team and GPMG, circling around from far behind to come up on either side of the laager and lay down a two-pronged barrage.

  ‘I can’t see us going forward,’ Ricketts said, ‘because there’s no way of advancing up that ridge without insupportable losses.’

  ‘I agree,’ Hailsham said. ‘On the other hand, if we head back the way we came, they’ll just up roots and follow us. By then, we’ll be deep in their territory and ripe for the picking.’

  ‘Call in an air strike,’ Danny suggested, ‘and let them do the work for us.’

  ‘We’re too close,’ Hailsham told him. ‘Any air strike is going to strike us, so let’s leave them out of it.’

  ‘We can go back further,’ Danny said.

  ‘They’ll pick us off like flies,’ Ricketts reminded him, ‘the minute we climb up into the dinkies.’

  ‘Which gets us back where we started,’ Hailsham said. ‘Right here. Still trapped.’

  At that moment, the GPMG of Jock’s team started roaring, the bullets making the sand dance in a jagged line that first exploded just below the ridge and then followed an erratic, oblique course up to its rim, where the bullets whined off harmlessly into thin air.

  Less than a minute later the other GPMG did the same, with similar results. Both teams were rewarded when mortar shells from somewhere behind the ridge whistled down and exploded dangerously close to them, showering the men and their useless GPMGs with sand, soil and gravel.

  Shortly after those mortar shells had been followed by others, coming closer all the time, Jock used his PRC 319 to contact Hailsham and inform him that he still could not see a thing beyond the ridge, even though he was clearly a sitting duck for the Iraqi mortar teams behind it.

  When Paddy called in with the same message, Hailsham told both teams to bug out.

  At that moment an Iraqi mortar shell hit a Pink Panther, filling the air with flying debris that caused almost as much damage as the blast itself. When the smoke had cleared away and those nearby had regained their hearing – namely, Hailsham, Ricketts and Danny – they saw one SAS trooper pinned lifeless beneath the smouldering remains of the vehicle, another lying in a pool of blood with his neck almost severed by a piece of jagged metal, and a third, though still alive, badly peppered by shrapnel and groaning, semi-conscious, in terrible pain.

  ‘Let’s all bug out,’ Captain Hailsham said. ‘We have no other option. We’ll shoot and scoot, and hope for the best. After that, it’s each man for himself. What do you say?’

  ‘Shoot and scoot,’ Ricketts confirmed.

  ‘Have that wounded man picked up and placed in my Pink Panther,’ Hailsham told Danny. ‘Then pass the word around the laager that we’re going to shoot and scoot, meeting back at the FOB in our own time. We go at my signal.’

  ‘Right, boss,’ Danny said. He scurried off at the crouch as more mortar shells exploded, showering all of them yet again.

  Glancing in both directions, Ricketts saw Jock and Paddy coming back in with their teams, crouched low and weaving, with the ground erupting behind them and sand spitting viciously between them. Miraculously, they all managed to get back into the laager without being hit.

  Just as they arrived back, two troopers heaved the wounded man, now on a makeshift stretcher, up into the rear of Hailsham’s Pink Panther and Danny took his place in the adjoining vehicle, preparing to drive Ricketts out.

  Johnny Boy was swinging his leg over the Honda and already revving it up.

  ‘Fucking A,’ he said. ‘Right!’

  Captain Hailsham raised his hand high in the air, held it there for a moment, then dropped it, bawling: ‘Shoot and scoot!’

  The Pink Panthers and LSVs roared into life, revving up, as Johnny Boy shot ahead in a cloud of churning sand, this time gripping the handlebars firmly. Racing up towards the ridge with Iraqi bullets whining about him, he was followed almost instantly by the Pink Panthers and LSVs, their troopers already firing at the ridge with their small arms and GPMGs. The crest of the ridge was torn apart by the syncopated barrage of gunfire.

  Suddenly Johnny Boy sailed into the air, leaving behind his motorbike, which exploded in mid-air, and flinging his arms wide as he somersaulted and crashed back down again.

  He was dead and they all knew it, so no one stopped for him. Instead they swerved around him and raced on up the slope to reach the top of the ridge, mangle some stunned Iraqis, then bounce and swerve down the other side in dense clouds of swirling sand.

  One LSV hit the ground nose-first. It somersaulted and crashed, throwing one trooper out, crushing the other, and exploding when its fuel tank burst and bullets set it on fire. The trooper flung clear, as he was peppered by Iraqi bullets, was mercifully already dead from a broken neck.

  The rest raced down the other side, bursting out of the trap, and then spread out, heading off in different directions, to confuse the Iraqis.

  Captain Hailsham saw the wide open spaces and could hardly believe it. Ricketts saw the same – the vast sweep of the empty desert – but then he heard a dreadful roaring, felt the hot breath of the beast, and was picked up and hurled through a shocking, unreal, searing silence.

  He returned to a recognizable world of clamour and pain.

  The sky was above him, mortar shells were exploding around him, and Danny, whose perfect features had earlier been marred by a broken nose, was leaning over him and trying to talk to him through a roaring shower of earth.

  ‘… OK?’ Da
nny bawled.

  Ricketts shook his head. He had meant to say ‘No’ but he couldn’t speak.

  ‘Can you get up?’ Danny asked.

  ‘No,’ Ricketts managed to croak, suddenly visualizing his wife and two daughters back in England, and swelling up with love for them. ‘Don’t think I can move at all.’

  ‘Shit,’ Danny said. Another shell exploded nearby. Bullets were making the sand spit all around him as his eyes filled with tears. ‘Damn it, Ricketts, just …’

  ‘What happened, Danny?’

  ‘A mortar shell fell too close. We were tipped over, Ricketts, flung out, just before we got clear away.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘Most of them made it, but they’re long gone by now.’

  ‘Get going, Danny. No need to stay with me.’

  ‘The Pink Panther’s fit for the wrecker’s yard. I’m trapped here with you, boss.’

  ‘Start running.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s an order.’

  ‘I can’t hear it.’

  ‘I thought you were a tough nut, a killer – so why don’t you run?’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, Ricketts.’ Danny glanced back over his shoulder, up the slope, towards the ridge, and saw a bunch of Iraqis coming down, their weapons aimed at him. ‘Too late,’ he said, turning back to Ricketts. ‘They’re calling our number right now and you know what they’ll do, boss.’

  He reached down, removed his Browning from its holster, held Ricketts’s head up, then put the barrel of the gun to his temple.

  ‘You know what they’ll do, boss. There’s no Geneva Convention here. Say the word and I’ll finish it. It’ll be a lot quicker.’

  Ricketts, though still in bad pain, grinned wryly at Danny’s suggestion. ‘No,’ he replied, prepared to get a bullet in the head in combat but not about to invite it in the ritual all SAS wives dreaded. ‘I’m not joining the Exit Club just yet. Now get up and run, Danny.’

  Danny sighed and turned away from Ricketts to aim his handgun at the Iraqis. ‘No, Sergeant-Major. I’ve never run in my life. Let’s see who gets the most. Start counting, boss.’

  ‘You mad bastard,’ Ricketts said.

  The Iraqis all fired at once. Ricketts raised his head as the ground erupted around Danny. The baby-faced corporal convulsed, his clothing torn to shreds, blood bursting from bullet holes, and then was picked up and punched back by the fusillade of gunfire, to land with a thud close to Ricketts.

  ‘Danny!’ Ricketts screamed. He managed to roll over and touch his friend’s shoulder just before the enemy gunfire reached him too, brutally, irrevocably blotting out his whole world.

  Chapter 17

  On 26 February 1991, a mere hundred hours after the land war had begun, but nearly seven months after the start of the Iraqi invasion, a defeated Iraq announced that it was withdrawing from Kuwait. Within hours, in a Baghdad Radio broadcast, Saddam Hussein renounced his claims on that country. Subsequently, Allied Marines entered Kuwait City in the wake of the victorious Kuwaiti and Saudi armies.

  The capital had already been infiltrated by the Boat Group of the SAS, which had been tasked with spreading confusion and chaos among the Iraqi troops based there. Working closely with the US Navy’s SEALS on a programme of disinformation, the SBS had managed to convince the Iraqis that the US Marines were poised to storm the city’s shoreline. It had also sabotaged Iraqi bases and set up OPs to call in air strikes and gunfire from the Allied battleships anchored in the Gulf.

  Last but not least, it was SAS troops who had captured the British Embassy in Kuwait in the final hours of the war. They abseiled onto the roof from a Sea King helicopter used explosives to blow off the doors, cleared the rooms with stun grenades, and checked that the building was free of booby-traps. Ambassador Michael Weston was then able to return and replace the tattered Union Jack with a new one.

  Even after the loss of the badly wounded Sergeant-Major Ricketts, already on his way back to Hereford, Major Hailsham had insisted that his remaining men should be allowed to fight all the way back to Kuwait. During that long march they did little fighting, but instead found themselves collecting more and more Iraqi prisoners, most of whom were in pitiful condition and all too keen to surrender by advancing with hands raised or even lying belly-down in the sand and waiting to be picked up. By that stage, the Allied camps for Iraqi prisoners were growing bigger every day and being looked after by the infantry battalions of the Coldstream Guards, the Royal Highland Fusiliers and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. Passing them in his Pink Panther, now battered and filthy, Hailsham was reminded of grainy old newsreels of the packed POW camps in Europe during World War Two. Though the most high-tech war in history had just been fought, some things never changed.

  Like many of the liberators, Major Hailsham, meeting up with some of his other SAS troops in liberated Kuwait, was shocked by what he found there. As Saddam Hussein had ordered his retreating troops to blow up the city’s landmarks, most of its most beautiful and important buildings, including the Emir’s residence, the Dasman Palace, were either in ruins or seriously damaged. The beaches and streets of the city were cluttered with munitions that continued to take the lives of many innocent children. A grisly search of the city’s morgues, basements and houses used by the Iraqi forces turned up hideous evidence of the widespread use of torture against Kuwaiti citizens, including electrocution and mutilation.

  Heightening the hellish atmosphere, the pall of smoke that covered the city had turned the sky a nightmarish, constant black, rendered even more frightening by the oily smoke pouring in from the six hundred or so oil wells cruelly set ablaze by the Iraqis. All around Kuwait City, under that stark black sky, the burning oil wells had created a fearsome wall of fire.

  After Saddam’s generals officially surrendered in a tent in the sand, the Iraqis started handing over Coalition POWs. While the captured British, American, Saudi and Kuwaiti airmen were welcomed off a Red Cross plane at Riyadh amid a blaze of media attention, two SAS men, troopers Stone and Gillett – the former wounded, the latter badly bruised – were quietly led away from the aircraft by the rear cargo door.

  Some hours later, ten other prisoners, including the British Tornado pilot John Peters, who had been paraded so shamelessly on television by the Iraqis shortly after being captured, were also released.

  While the widely publicized Peters was shaking hands with British diplomats at the Jordanian border, another man released with him was spirited away from the scene as if he had never existed. That man was SAS Sergeant Andrew Winston.

  How did you manage to stay sane in captivity?’ Andrew was asked by Major Hailsham when safely back in the barracks in Hereford, England, and having a booze-up in the Paludrine Club with Hailsham, Jock, Paddy and the recently blooded troopers Stone and Gillett, both of whom, like Andrew, had survived their period of brutal captivity.

  Though every man present in the bar was fully aware of the fact that the SAS had suffered dreadful losses in Iraq, it was a Regimental tradition not to discuss the dead, or those who had failed to ‘beat the clock’, and so the names of their own deceased – Sergeant-Major Phil Ricketts, Sergeant Danny Porter and Trooper John Willoughby – while on everyone’s mind, had not actually been mentioned.

  The names of those who had died had already been inscribed on plaques fixed to the base of the Regimental clock tower, at the SAS HQ, Stirling Lines. Tribute had thus been paid, and now everyone in the bar was determined to return to his normal, self-protective routine of bullshit and banter.

  ‘How did I stay sane?’ Andrew repeated mockingly, determined to make light of his heavy burden as he waved his lined notebook. ‘Piece of piss. I just created some poems in my head, based on my experiences with my captors, then wrote them down in this little book on the plane coming back. That’s what kept me sane, boss.’

  ‘More bullshit,’ Paddy said.

  ‘More hot air,’ Jock added.

  ‘We’ll have to compare notes,’ S
tone suggested in his dry, ironic way.

  ‘I didn’t know you wrote poetry,’ Gillett said. ‘Gee, that’s really surprised me. When can we read them?’

  ‘Ah, those,’ big Andrew replied, flashing his perfect teeth in a teasing smile and doing a neat, theatrical double-take, ‘they’re tales for another day.’

  Discover other books in the SAS Series

  Discover other books in the SAS Series published by Bloomsbury at

  www.bloomsbury.com/SAS

  Soldier A: Behind Iraqi Lines

  Soldier B: Heroes of the South Atlantic

  Soldier C: Secret War in Arabia

  Soldier D: The Colombian Cocaine War

  Soldier E: Sniper Fire in Belfast

  Soldier F: Guerillas in the Jungle

  Soldier G: The Desert Raiders

  Soldier H: The Headhunters of Borneo

  Soldier J: Counter Insurgency in Aden

  Soldier K: Mission to Argentina

  Soldier L: The Embassy Siege

  Soldier M: Invisible Enemy in Kazakhstan

  Soldier N: Gambian Bluff

  Soldier O: The Bosnian Inferno

  Soldier P: Night Fighters in France

  Soldier Q: Kidnap the Emperor!

  Soldier R: Death on Gibraltar

  Soldier S: The Samarkand Hijack

  Soldier T: War on the Streets

  Soldier U: Bandit Country

  Soldier V: Into Vietnam

  Soldier W: Guatemala – Journey Into Evil

  Soldier X: Operation Takeaway

  Soldier Y: Days of the Dead

  Soldier Z : For King and Country