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Looking For Trouble |
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March 22 |
(Published March 23)
SOLDIERS from the Black Watch yesterday put weeks of waiting and frustration behind them and rolled into enemy territory. When the order to move finally came, the advance towards Basra was swift.
The first tanks had crossed the border by 6am, pushing on towards positions already taken and held by America's 7th Regimental Combat team and the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers. The various packets - groups of vehicles - followed on out of their camp just inside Kuwait. By 8am the only signs that the Black Watch had been there were a few fires smouldering in the desert.
Along the main roads to the border, hundreds more troops, tanks and armoured vehicles sat camped and waiting for their turn to head north, among them the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, who had arrived in Kuwait later than some other armoured regiments and were still putting the final finishing touches to their preparations.
A few telegraph poles, a line of pylons and the occasional farm, a rare splash of green in an otherwise beige landscape, were the only non-military features on the landscape. Everything else was a sea of camouflage netting with the occasional gun barrel or radio antennae poking through.
On the road those now heading towards the border were on full alert, weapons loaded and ready to use. Even the support vehicles were armed to the teeth, machine gunners taking station above the cabs of the fuel and ammunition trucks and those in Land Rovers fighting for space with grenades and light anti-tank weapons stashed inside.
Nearing the border, they left the tarmac of the main road and began to bounce across the rutted sand, following in the tracks of the vehicles which had already passed the same way. Back on the main road again there were more signs of life, bushes and palm trees and a scrubby patch of land with camels grazing.
By 9am the lead tanks of the battle group had pushed 20kms over the border, while the rear packets were still on the Kuwaiti side. Approaching the breach in the border, the column entered the UN demilitarised zone, a sign warning impotently "No entry to military vehicles or personnel." At the border itself they passed through a berm, past ditches and a barbed wire fence, 6ft high, past a police post, perhaps half a mile of open land, and posts lining the road topped incongruously with traffic cones.
Then more dirt track, over engineers' bridges laid across a deep ditch 10ft deep and 20ft across, through a 10ft high berm and into Iraq, bouncing along an unmade road running parallel with the border.
They went past crops of strawberries, rough single storey buildings and Warrior Armoured Personnel Carriers standing guard at the roadside. From ahead came the rumble of heavy artillery fire off to the west and the east. In a field beside the road a couple of Iraqi children ran out to watch the column driving by.
10am and the lead columns had pushed well into Iraq moving on towards the US positions they were to relieve. Back nearer the border the column passed elements of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, parked up by the roadside, tanks with guns trained in all directions, holding the crossing and covering advancing units.
Hitting the main road north, the main body of the column rolled forwards. There was fighting further ahead but the Black Watch was still to engage the enemy. Of fleeing columns of refugees, there was no sign.
Beside the road, more houses, ramshackle and poor. Many of their occupants were standing about watching the troops pass. Others walked beside the road scarcely glancing up as the vehicles passed.
Further away across the fields were more tanks while Apache gunships flew backwards and forwards overhead, up towards the front or back to their bases on the Kuwaiti side of the border.
Crossing Basra road they sighted small groups of prisoners of war clustered below. Ringed by hoops of barbed wire, the prisoners sat on the ground, boots off, huddled together, guarded by British soldiers. There were no more than 30, in two pens, each with its own guard.
Shortly afterwards, the first sign of refugees, a family of three crammed into a pick up truck, their belongings bound up in string on the back. A British soldier stood nearby and all around them were parked up vehicles from the Royal Engineers.
Another flat bed truck drove past the convoy, sheep packed into the back. The driver had found a handkerchief and tied it round the radio aerial as a makeshift white flag.
Another family drove past, the children perched on top of a couple of mattresses strapped over another sorry pile of possessions. On the sand piled up beside the road, two small boys, no older than six, sat cross-legged watching, waving to the invading army. Ahead, three large fires were burning on the horizon.
The occasional car went past, usually with groups of men inside, some ignoring the convoy, others hooting their horns, smiling and waving a greeting. Children seemed more interested and pleased to see the British troops, gathering at the roadside and waving excitedly as they passed. Some of the soldiers responded by handing them sweets from their ration packs.
At one point the column passed a large pile of tank shells, unfired and discarded by the side of the road in a ditch.
By 11.30am one company had reached the Az Zubayr oil field, the Basra fertiliser complex and petrochemical works, two more had gone into the town itself.
Reports came in that one company had encountered T54 tanks and had moved forward to engage them, but they had been abandoned.
And that was the theme along much of the route. Beside the road, half a dozen abandoned artillery pieces pointed back towards the border. Dug in, they appear to have been left behind rather than destroyed. Further along the road a company sized unit, possibly about 100 men, had abandoned its tanks and weapons at the side of the road and fled.
All along the road were signs of an army that had been ordered to dig in to defend the southern approach to Basra but which had melted away in the face of overwhelming odds. But from ahead the sounds of heavy artillery fire suggested that sterner opposition was to come.