Looking For Trouble

Trouble

(Original copy) WHEN we awoke the mood had changed. Gone was the nervous excitement of the night before that came with the first taste of action. In its place was something less tangible, a sense that nothing was quite as it had been. It was John who told us, John the irrepressible motor transport officer, whose ebullient nature enthused all around him. He didn't really need to say anything, his face told its own story. But he told us all the same. There were casualties, he said, some of the boys were dead. We didn't really know them, the men who had gone, didn't know them like their friends did. Maybe we had met them briefly, said hello or smiled and nodded as they drove past over the bridge at Basra and on towards the enemy they could not see. But the feeling of loss was there, all the same. Two men killed, dying together in the dark, gone in a moment, killed by a shell fired by one of our own tanks in the confusion of battle. Two more badly hurt. A blue on blue, they call it, but maybe friendly fire is not such an inappropriate name after all. The commander who ordered the shot to be fired, distraught, inconsolable. And another young man dead, Barry Stephen, 31 years old, killed as he tried to protect his friends, climbing up to man the machine gun on the roof of his vehicle just as the rocket propelled grenade struck and tipped them over. Difficult to know which was harder to take. John called the others together to tell them the news not long after they rose. We did not intrude, it was their business. Later, they stood round talking and all agreed. No one had really ever promised them that it would be easy. That morning was the low point of the war. For days we had faced attack after attack, the countryside around the town of Az Zubayr seemingly teeming with men with AK47s and rocket propelled grenades. Wherever we had gone, they found us. One night early on we camped in the centre of the town near an old Iraqi barracks, but sleep was not easy. Packs of dogs roamed the area and every now and again one would stand on a mine, the explosion ripping it apart. Even when we did sleep, we were woken by alerts, one garbled message ordering us to don full chemical warfare suits and masks, not an easy task at any time but half naked, half asleep and deeply alarmed it seemed far more difficult than when we tried it at the training centre near Salisbury. And of course, no sooner were we fully suited up, than the alarm was reduced and reduced until we no longer had anything on but the gas masks, and then even those were abandoned with exasperation as it became clear that someone had over-reacted. And then we were told to move out, the camp site was just too dangerous, too difficult to defend. So we moved to a new base close to where the prisoners of war were being held and spent a night there, short on water because the supplies had not caught up with. That was when the soldiers found out about the prisoners' rations, the tins of tuna and luncheon meat and the cartons of orange juice and the biscuits and all the other treats that the troops could only dream of. And their supply of water. So maybe it was no surprise that when it went dark some of prisoners found their rations had been replaced wth boil in the bag Lancashire hot pot from the British ration packs. And maybe it was no surprise, either, that when one prisoner who had proved difficult struggled with the troops trying to process the new arrivals, the British soldiers should take it in turns to kick him until he went quiet. Or so it seemed in the dark. Good, said one soldier who had been out on the roads where the militia had been firing earlier in the day. And no-one said any more about it. But that spot, too, was thought too dangerous and we moved on again, this time in the dark, no lights on, everyone short-tempered, a lot of people shouting at other people because they were a little bit more afraid than they would care to admit, vehicles blunder ing about, trying to find somewhere to park up among the sand banks and ditches. That was the night before the worst morning. After the news of the deaths was broken we tried to tidy ourselves up a bit, washing with the little bit of water we had left in the leaking jerry can in the side bins of the Landrover, rinsing out our clothing, grabbing a shovel and wandering off to find a little bit of privacy to dig our own toilet, all the things we tried to do every day to make urselves feel a little bit more human. But it was no good that day, no sooner had we washed our clothes than a sandstorm whipped up the dirt around us, blotting out our vision and covering the still damp garments with a fine layer of reddish dust which clung to the moisture and then set like quick-drying cement. And then it rained and someone let rip with a couple of rounds from their SA80 because he thought he saw something move, he claimed later, and everyone ran for cover, diving into the mud beneath vehicles or into the nearest trench. He would be fined for that, £2000 if it could be proved that it was a negligent discharge, but of course he would say that he fired because he believed that he was in danger. And then more Scud alerts and panic, orders to form up and get out, people shouting again and desperately trying to get away, from what we were not yet sure but the body language said everything we needed to know. We had to get away, and quickly, but that is not how armies work. They shout and argue and line up in orderly fashion and wait for the correct order and while all that is happening the gunmen in the dark are closing in and suddenly the front of the convoy was rocked by a massive explosion as a rocket propelled grenade exploded between the lead vehicles. That at least seemed to have some effect, though it was another uncomfortable 15 minutes before we pulled out and off down another dark road to a new temporary home, further back from the front. The threat, it emerged, was tanks, hundreds of them, seen emerging from Basra and heading in our direction. Though it later emerged that there were not that many, and they were not heading in our direction at all. But we didn't know that at the time, so we, the lighter vehicles which had no protection against such a threat, had run away. We paid for our safety with another night of misery trying to sleep in a bivvi bag on a 45 degree slope next to the vehicles, surrouned by ammunition and fuel trucks, constantly sliding to the bottom of the bag and having to crawl back up the slope, only to slide down again the moment sleep came. And being woken by another gas alert, stumbling dopily through the darkness straight into a hole now filled with water, lurching into the Landrover and sitting in sodden trousers, naked above the waist, gas mask pulled on angrily, fuming noisily about the stupidity of the whole business. It couldn't get any worse, we told ourselves, and for once we were right. The following morning we woke to find that the rain had gone and the sun was out, our clothes were dry and we were on the move again, this time heading towards Basra. Douggie Hay's raid on the Baath party HQ in Az Zubayr seemed to have broken the back of the resistance there and we were taking over the town. Overnight there had been reports of some sort of uprising in Basra itself and though these were overstated, there had been some rioting in the western slums of the city, come sign that the regime might be losing its grip. Our armoured units camped on the outskirts of Basra had also been busy, a battle we had witnessed in the distance as we stood around after the gas alert watching the explosions bursting along the skyline, the sound of the blasts mingling with the rolls of thunder which were putting paid to any thoughts of sleep. High explosives, bomblets and phosphorous shells had rained down on the Iraqi positions, a mortar line blown apart, armed pick up trucks and tanks destroyed wherever they were spotted. In Az Zubayr, the militia men were on the run. Piling into mini buses, they tried to flee from the city grabbing whatever they could lay their hands on. Pockets stuffed with hundreds of dollars of cash, they headed north out of the town. The first one got through, but there was no such luck for the others. Picked off at vehicles check points they found themselves driving straight into the sights of the British troops. The men who had terrorised the civilian population and subjected the advancing British troops to a campaign of harassment were forced to squat by the roadside, hands on their heads, British guns pointed unswervingly at them. We should have known by then that it was too easy, but buoyed by such success, the decision was taken to bring in the first of the water bowsers which would convince the local population that we were there to help them get back on their feet. On a scrappy piece of land on the edge of town, we stopped and a large crowd gathered. Everyone was trying to talk to everyone else, though neither side had any real command of the other's language and both resorted to the old British trikc of repeating what had been said, only more slowly and louder. They wanted water, they said. We understood, we said. They repeated they requests, we repeated our assurances and so it could have gone on for hours if the militia which it turned out had been watching this cultural exchange from cover nearby had not chosen that moment to drop two mortar bombs a coule of hundred yards in frot of us and open up with their AK47s. It was the first time some of us had ever come under fire, and we stopped for a moment, looking at each other, before everything else kicked back in. The crowd was screaming and scattering, we were running but not sure where to run to. Towards the explosions? Away from them? Rob, the captain, alarm etched on his face, waving us to get to a wall for some cover, expecting another shell to go off any second. But thinking about it later, they were better shots than that. They probably just wanted to scare and scatter the crowd. So we ran away again but the next day we were back handing out food and water to the massive crowd which could not seem to grasp the British concept of queueing and did not take kindly to the American idea of using Kuwaiti translators to speak to them. It worked, to some extent, but only after the CO found a man who claimed to have some clout with the local population and could speak good English and cleared a path for him to the front of the crowd, where he shouted at those who were coming round for the fourth or fifth time and sent them home and restored some semblance of order to what a situation which could easily have got out of hand. Ups and downs, all the time. Before we had a chance to get comfortable at our new base, that too came under fire, but this time a lot of people had a very lucky escape. This time, the mortars were bang on target. The first warning we had was a radio message to say that a 120mm mortar battery had been spotted well within range, but we wre outside the camp gates waiting to join a night raid into Basra. Inside the base, the garbled message arrived that 120 Iraqi soldiers were approaching. The first mortar exploded as they were reaching for their weapons to fight off the attackers. Outside the gate, the first explosion sounded in front of our Landrover, rocking it violently. Another, behind us, followed. It was a classic military tactic, it was explained later, called bracketing. As we ripped open the Landrover door and ran towards the Warrior armoured vehilce parked just a few yards away, five more shells exploded in a line between the first two. We ran like men possessed and hurled ourselves through the open hatch, turned and saw Rob getting back out, and running back to the Landrover, expecting at any moment another shell to explode and blow him to pieces, heard him shouting for Davie, our driver, convinced that he was out there. And then we heard Davie's voice, behind us. He had been the first in through the door. We yelled to Rob to get in, pulled the hatch behind him and sat there trying to grab our breath. Rob looked terrible, but that was no great surprise. What we had just witnessed was an act of genuine courage by a man who had not paused to think about his own safety but had gone back out, placed himself in danger, to try to save a fellow soldier. Inside the camp, they were not so lucky. Two with serious injuries, hit by shrapnel as they slept on top of their trucks, three more hit but saved by their body armour. Those not wearing body armour receiving a mouthful of abuse to add ot the pain of their physical injuries, though body armour is bulky and uncomfortable and sleeping in it difficult. They were just unlucky, but at least the fuel and ammunition trucks had not been hit. And that was the worst of it over with. After that night, it seemed, things began to go our way again. We moved on to a new camp, this time an airfield outside Az Zubayr, from which we could run up to the front line without too much trouble, and although the first thing everyone did when they arrived was to grab their pick axes and shovels and dig like demented rabbits until everyone had their own six foot deep trench into which they could jump should a new attack come, we all began to relax a bit more. Basra was still to come, but the militia in Az Zubayr seemed to be on the run. And there was something else to raise the spirits, at least of those on our side. The snipers were resting up in the same place, and they brought with them tales from the rooftops of fights and stake outs and chases and dead militia men picked off and mortr plates destroyed. They had killed 17 people in just eight days. We listened fascinated to these quiet men with their strange rifles wrapped in rags who sat around for days waiting for the moment to strike, but it was the story of Pedro and Robbo and Mark that held everyone in its grip. How they gave chase into a warren of houses after Mark dropped the first militia man with a clean shot to the head, how Pedro burst in through the door, how he ducked, doged and dived for cover as the man inside tried to fend them off first with a grenade, then an AK-47 and finally an RPG, how Mark was bowled over by the exploding grenade but still managed to get back up and shoot the man dead despite having crushed a vertebra in his back and how Pedro and Scott raced in and mopped up the others. For the snipers, it was a rare moment of hand to hand fighting. For those listening to the story, it was a moment to give them hope, the knowledge that the militia men who had tormented them were being hunted down, that they were running out of places to hide.

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