Harry Flashman and the Invasion of Iraq (11 page)

“Bloody close shave, eh Sir?” commented one of the sergeants in the group.

“Too damned close by half,” I answered angrily.

“Incompetent bastards,” muttered a Marine alongside the sergeant. “Why the bloody ‘ell can’t we have British pilots?”

“Cos 40 Commando have got ‘em all,” came the reply. “We’ve got to make do with the yanks, so let’s just get on with it shall we? Stop moaning and get on board.”

Sullenly, sporting worried looks, the group of men filed on board the chopper and the rotors began to turn again. The rest of the rehearsal went off without a hitch - but at the back of everybody’s mind was the prospect of night rehearsals, which would start the next evening.

The following day, while everyone remained preoccupied by the flight rehearsals, 42 Commando grew in size yet again. This time the arrivals were civilians, in the form of a brace of journalists and a two-man TV crew from ITN in London. Bill Neely and his cameraman Dave Harman would shortly broadcast live footage of the war to audiences around the world, from inside a front line unit. Their arrival was another clear indicator that the start of the conflict wasn’t far away. They were accommodated in another newly-erected scruffy green tent adjacent to my own, where they spent most of the day fiddling with satellite broadcast equipment or barking instructions to the editors in London via Bill’s mobile phone. I had to take my hat off to the media foursome, they were either brave or stupid, having arrived with only a modicum of equipment and virtually no training in how to use it. Benevolent Marines took pity on them and they received some rudimentary training in how to don their respirators and chemical warfare suits. The thought of entering a hostile country armed to the teeth was worrying enough; what kind of fool would voluntarily do it armed only with a microphone, I wondered. The local ITN production crew was staying in Kuwait City, so I made a point of befriending the TV crew in the hope that this would give me a further excuse (if any were needed) to get out of the camp once in a while. Bill’s soft, Northern-Irish drawl made his anecdotes all the easier to listen to and he had visited many of the same trouble spots as me over the years. He was a likeable enough chap and certainly pleasant company for whiling away the occasional hour over a cup of tea, although his dogged insistence on joining the Marines running around the camp each afternoon made me question his sanity somewhat. While Bill was out running his bustling cameraman would set up their satellite antennas and the broadcasting equipment in preparation for their daily bulletin on the news back in the UK. As the sun fell to the horizon, inquisitive Marines would gather behind the camera to listen to what was being said to the outside world about their preparations for war. Bill’s broadcasts were highly complementary about the Marines, which quickly endeared him to the men of 42 Commando. Given that he was unarmed and the Marines would soon provide his sole protection from the advancing Arab hoards, I was hardly surprised that he waxed lyrical about their competence -I would have done exactly the same.

The arrival of the journalists provided a welcome distraction, but the time for the night rehearsals was on us before we knew it. This time we would be carrying our full battle equipment which, in the case of many of the Marines, meant rucksacks weighing well over 120lbs. All the weapon systems were also lugged out to the landing site, including machine-guns of various sizes and calibres, long range sniper rifles, mortars and antitank rockets. My own bergen was a little lighter than most, since I had declined to carry any troop equipment or ammunition (in my opinion this should be the job of the enlisted men rather than the officers) and had stripped my kit of any unnecessary clutter. In fact, my rucksack was three-quarters filled by my sleeping bag and was almost embarrassingly light to carry. I could see little point exhausting myself during the rehearsals when the real operation would be upon us soon enough. It was a cold, clear night with just a light breeze blowing over the camp as I joined the survivors of the near miss the day before, many of whom were chuntering about the prospect of entrusting their lives yet again to our incompetent pilot. Laden with enough equipment and weaponry to make Al Capone think twice, we trudged out of the camp towards the landing site. After the various debacles of the day before, some sensible soul in the planning staff had decided that there was no need for us to embark while the rotors were turning. Instead we were lined out in a holding area and left to sit on our bergens while the huge fleet of helicopters came clattering in and landed. Once all the engines had fallen silent, lines of men yomped out into the desert to clamber onboard their respective aircraft, many still loudly voicing their opinions of our American colleagues. As I had suspected, whichever genius had done the sums on the load capacity of the US helicopters had failed to take into account the enormity of the equipment the men were carrying. The first two attempts to emplane failed, as the hold became completely filled before everyone was onboard, with several of our number still standing at the foot of the tail ramp. The helicopter was emptied and we started again.  On the third attempt, with men and equipment squeezed into every nook and cranny, everyone managed to get inside.  The tail ramp was eventually raised and with a familiar whine the engines began to turn; my stomach turned with them. I had a sudden feeling of impending danger, a feeling which over the years I have come to trust and rely on. On other occasions I might have been tempted to cut and run, but here I found myself trapped between two enormous Marines and several feet from the exit, so I had little option but to stay put and pray.

As the pilot ran the turbines up to full power the huge Sikorsky began to shake violently from side to side, just as it had done during the first rehearsals. I leaned forward, craning my neck to see through one of the tiny porthole windows. Outside, a maelstrom of sand was being kicked up into the rotors. As it struck the whirling blades it created an eerie circle of white sparks dancing above the helicopter, and for a moment I forgot the predicament we were in and thought to myself what an attractive sight it was. Then we were airborne, rising gently into the night sky. Through the window I could make out the silhouettes of other helicopters flying alongside us and, as we banked over to the right, I could see the lights of Camp Gibraltar several hundred feet below on the flat desert plain.

For the next twenty minutes everything went swimmingly. Flying in formation at around three hundred feet, we described a large square, first south, then west, then north, eventually eastwards back towards the camp. I kept an eye out for the other helicopters in the group and caught occasional sight of them, seldom more than a couple of hundred yards away. Then I felt the speed drop away, the rotor noise lessened slightly and we began to descend. Through the porthole I could see the lights of the camp not half a mile away. We were not hovering, as is normal with a helicopter landing, but moving gently forward and descending at the same time. I braced myself for the bump of landing, but it never came. Instead, the turbines began to screech ever louder and I realised that our descent had ceased - instead, we were climbing. I had no idea why this should be, but I could guess. Looking through night vision goggles, the flat surface of desert should have been clear as day to the pilot. But as the helicopter approached the ground, sand flying up would obscure the landing sight, meaning that the pilot would need to descend using his instruments. Not competent enough to maintain a hover, the pilot was unable to gauge the speed of his descent and had aborted the landing. Sure enough, as soon as we had climbed a few feet, the helicopter swung round in a circle and we began our approach again.  Some of the more experienced Marines were exchanging worried glances, while their younger comrades grinned nervously and exchanged the hand-signal for “wanker” in the direction of the cockpit. The second approach was an action-replay of the first; just as I braced myself for the impact of landing, we overshot the aiming mark, ascended, and went round in another circle. Third time lucky old son, I thought to myself, let’s see you get this crate on the deck and then we can all bugger off for a cup of tea and bed. It wasn’t to be. The third attempt was no different to the first two. And so it continued, for a fourth, fifth and sixth time. Sooner or later the pilot was going to have to brave it, trust his instruments, and get his steed on the ground. I braced myself as we went in for the seventh time, and it was a bloody good job I did, for we hit the deck so hard it fairly knocked the wind of me. A land bang sounded from the undercarriage, the helicopter bounced off the hard sand floor and we were airborne yet again, this time with the engines wailing louder than ever as our inept cabbie struggled to get his machine out of harm’s way. By this time the Marines were sporting faces like thunder and it would barely have surprised me if they had rushed the cockpit. We continued to climb and I realised fairly quickly that we had ceased travelling round in circles and the helicopter was now moving on a linear path, south east if my sense of direction was anything to go by. Just then the loadmaster stepped forward and gestured to the nearest Marine to remove his ear defenders. A message was passed back through the cabin. I listened with disbelief as I was told that we had hit the ground so hard that part of the undercarriage had sheared off. Unable to land safely in the desert, we were to make an emergency landing at Ali-al-Saleem airbase, almost 100 miles away. I was momentarily filled with rage, until I realised that we would at least be able to land safe and sound on tarmac and I therefore had a better than even chance of seeing the night through without serious injury. It was almost an hour until we eventually touched down on terra firma, with fire trucks left and right of us and the helicopter listing over to one side, minus one of its landing wheels. It was rapidly becoming apparent to everyone on board that it would take a minor miracle for us to even reach Iraq intact, let alone fight a battle once we got there. Thirty-odd Marines clambered out of the helicopter and onto the tarmac of Ali-al-Saleem, swearing blue murder if they ever got their hands on the aircrew who, conscious of self-preservation, had beat a hasty retreat and were nowhere to be seen. A coach and baggage truck were waiting for us so we wrestled our equipment onboard and clambered inside the coach before being driven back to Camp Gibraltar in complete silence. I have seldom seen a troop of Marines so morose as that one - they had been given plenty of reason to contemplate their own mortality recently and we had got no further than the rehearsals; the prospect of doing it for real was looming large in everyone’s mind.

The following day nothing was said openly about the debacle of the previous night’s rehearsals, and during the afternoon I paid the ops room a visit in order to check my pigeonhole for letters from home (I maintained a smutty correspondence with Charlotte Woodstock throughout the campaign, writing frequently of my intentions towards her upon my return, which were anything but honourable. Credit where it’s due, the little minx matched me stroke for stroke and some her letters were blue beyond belief.) Whilst there I caught wind of a heated debate taking place over the map table and quickly realised there was a conversation taking place between the officers of the Commando Planning Group in which the possibility of using British helicopters was being discussed. From behind the partition curtain I silently urged them to make the decision but the consensus was that there weren’t enough British helicopters to facilitate the lift and anyway it was too political at this point to make such a move, so we had to stick with the yanks come what may. Bloody fools, it was all I could do to keep myself from crying out in frustration, but the decision was made so I skulked back into my tent. None of us knew it, but it was a decision which very nearly cost 42 Commando its place in the invasion.

Later in the day I noticed the CO disappearing out of his tent for his afternoon run with a wry smile on his face and a distinct spring in his step. The Ops Officer and BGE were also in high spirits and I began to suspect that something sinister was afoot.
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My fears were confirmed during the evening briefing, when the Ops Officer announced that the unit had been put on 48 hours notice-to-move, and that Brigade were fully expecting the assault to begin before the week was out. My innards turned to jelly as the damned fools in the headquarters cheered out loud. I joined them with gusto of course, there was no merit in letting them see me for the coward I really was, but I wondered briefly if the day wasn’t fast approaching when Flashy should don his civilian clothes and slip quietly over the perimeter wall. With a fistful of dollar bills, a credit card, passport and a little good fortune I could probably be back in Blighty inside a week. But then of course there would be the ignominy of facing a court martial for desertion and all the humiliation that went with it, not to mention being black-balled out of the mess and barred from the Cavalry Club. No, I would have to take my chances with the commandos and hope that I would be able to stay out of harm’s way once we were in Iraq. The briefing left me entirely without appetite so I sloped back to my accommodation in a blue funk in order to avoid all the gung-ho joviality that would doubtless fill the dining tent that evening.

For once my timing was spot-on, for shortly afterwards Bill Neely appeared, asking for a ride to Kuwait City. I rounded up the combat camera team and the four of us piled into their Mitsubishi and exited the camp at speed. Bill had spent much of the previous days shooting background footage of the boys training and wanted to deliver the resulting video cassette to the ITN production team in the Kuwait City Hilton. It was a first-rate opportunity to spend a few moments in the civility of an air-conditioned building and get some decent tucker at the same time. After the traumas of the past couple of days I could think of no better tonic for the general insanity that was sweeping Camp Gibraltar.

The ITN production team, clearly frustrated at being miles away from the “action”, greeted us like returning heroes and laid on a fair old spread of sandwiches, fruit, chocolate deserts and the like. The only thing missing was a decent drink, but that didn’t stop me from tucking into the chow as if my life depended on it. Bill interrupted our feeding frenzy to introduce some of his colleagues, including a couple of fellow reporters who had not managed to obtain military clearance and were therefore stuck in Kuwait City. One of them was clearly anxious to make a move north towards the Iraqi border before the fighting began.