Harry Flashman and the Invasion of Iraq (16 page)

My third day in Iraq was largely uneventful and I spent most of it loafing around avoiding work, which was remarkably easy to do, since I was studiously ignoring the radio and almost no-one in the chain of command knew my exact location. The Brigade Commander, happy that Al Faw was now secure, wasted no time in taking the fight to the Iraqis. J Company’s snipers continued to report occasional tank and artillery movement to their north and QDG had come across several large-scale Iraqi formations in the course of their recces. Rather than allowing the enemy time to regroup, the Brigade was pushing forward as fast as it could. Helicopters buzzed endlessly overhead and the road was thick with vehicles as 40 Commando increased the momentum of their push northwest towards Basra.  Much as the Marines of 42 had been cock-a-hoop when we departed Kuwait, the men of 40 Commando were buzzing with anticipation as they left Al Faw. Convoys of Pinzgauers and Land Rovers crawled past J Company’s positions, all crammed with men, equipment and weaponry. Ahead of them lay around 30 miles of unknown territory, thick with Iraqi troops and armour.  Behind them they left a somewhat dejected company group, which remained to take care of Al Faw town, and the whole of 42 Commando, most of whom were also hoping for a move north as quickly as possible. Frankly, the previous couple of days had given me enough bragging material for several months of drinking in the Cavalry Club and I was entirely happy to watch someone else marching off to war instead of me. I hunkered down in my sleeping bag that evening a happy man - with a bit of luck and a following wind, 40 Commando would be in Basra inside a week, and then we could all go home.

Shortly before midnight, for the second night in a row, I was shaken awake by one of the Marines. Not happy, I demanded to know what the devil he was doing. The answer could not have been better.

“We’re moving, Sir. Everyone has to make their way to the LS.”

“Moving?” I spluttered. “Moving where?” “We’re going back to Kuwait, Sir,” he told me, and was gone.

Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or perhaps just wild optimism, but I was unable to stop my imagination running wild with thoughts of hot showers, decent food, a good night’s sleep, and a rapid return to Blighty. Frankly, I should have known better.

NOTES

1.
A handful of men within 42 Commando had also seen service in the Falklands War 21 years earlier. Uniquely, Colours Sergeant (later Warrant Officer) John “Ginge” Davidson served with the Reconnaissance Troop of 45 Commando in the South Atlantic and as a sniper with the Reconnaissance Troop of 42 Commando in the Gulf.

2.
The sacking of the US Marine Corps helicopter squadrons was eventually reported in the British press and CO 42 Commando was quoted as saying the US aircrews had “bottled out”. The press coverage caused a political furore - but since the comments were factually accurate and had the support of many senior British officers, no action was taken.

3.
“Jundi”: soldier (Arabic).

4.
The Battle of the Marshes, fought largely on the Al Faw Peninsular, was one of the major actions of the Iran-Iraq war and is estimated to have cost the lives of 10,000 men.

5.
Bodies collected by 3 Commando Brigade were indeed buried on the Al Faw peninsular to avoid a health hazard. The graves were marked and, under the auspices of the Red Crescent, they were exhumed a day or two later and given a formal Muslim burial.

6.
Many of the Iraqi soldiers in the predominantly Shia south-east of the country had been drafted in from Sunni regions further north and were distrusted by the local populace, who quickly disassociated themselves from the fighters once the war began.

6

Back to Kuwait. This was amazing, unexpected, and excellent news. I had no idea what had precipitated it but if I had met the man responsible for the decision I would have kissed him. All around in the darkness was the quiet sound of rustling kit as the Marines stowed away their belongings in their bergens. I could even see the silhouettes of one of two keen souls standing on the track, rucksacks packed, waiting to go. I was up and out of my sleeping bag in seconds, delighted to be heading away from Iraq and back to somewhere I could get a hot shower and a cooked meal. My spirits sagged somewhat as I wrestled my bergen onto my back and realised the landing site was a good couple of miles away - no great distance, but a veritable marathon when carrying a small house on one’s back, and all the more so since my feet had still not fully recovered from the pounding they had taken on our arrival. Annoyingly, there was no sign of either the truck or the taxi that the Marines had so diligently liberated, so there was no alternative to walking. Still, a few blisters and an aching back seemed a relatively small price to pay for safe deliverance from a war zone, so I braced myself for the long walk to the helicopters. After a few minutes, the whole troop formed up on the road and the long trek began. Happily, fortune smiled down on me once again and transport then arrived, in the form of an ancient, dilapidated flatbed van, which had been commandeered by 2 Troop. It was already crammed with Marines, but they promised to return and pick us up, so I stopped walking at once, plonked myself on my bergen and wasted no time in demanding a cup of tea from the man nearest me.

True to their word, the van was indeed sent back for us and we piled into it with gusto. It was only just big enough to hold everybody so I shouldered my way past the Marines and climbed into the cab beside the driver. Let the enlisted men fight it out for a space in the back, I thought to myself, it’s only fitting that the officers ride in the front. In any case I wanted to have my seat secured lest anyone start any of that old-fashioned nonsense about allowing the more junior ranks onboard first. I wasn’t walking a step further than I had to, and that was all there was to it. Eventually, with some ingenious use of straps and karabiners, the bergens were fastened to the outside while the men squeezed together in the back. Before we set off the driver hopped out to give a brief on the finer mechanical details of his vehicle.

“There’s no brakes and the horn doesn’t work. So if anyone gets in the way, shout at the buggers to move, or I’ll run ‘em over,” he explained to the merriment of his passengers, before hopping back into the cab and starting the engine.

In the event, the van was only allowed to travel as far as the road junction at which we had been mortared on our arrival in Iraq, less than half the distance to the helicopter landing site. The rest of the journey was undertaken on foot, not my preferred method of travel but one I undertook willingly in the knowledge that a flight to safety awaited at the end of it. The landing site was back on the crater-pitted mud flats, about half a mile south west of where we had arrived just a few days earlier. Despite the bitter cold that night, the salt-crusted clay was not quite firm enough to support my weight and gave way with each step, allowing the cloying mud to gather around my boots as I walked. By the time I reached the designated rendezvous point my shoulder muscles were on fire and I was in a muck sweat. Unhappily there was a considerable wait for the helicopters to arrive, during which time the wind cut straight through my damp clothes, leaving me shivering like a schoolboy on a December rugby pitch. Fortunately my sniper colleagues were on hand, trading unlikely stories of shooting Iraqi soldiers at inconceivable distances and passing round steaming mugs of tea, which I unashamedly cadged from them whilst attempting to hide my hypothermic shivering. In the lee of an earth wall, a long line of stoves flickered, heating countless ration packs and mugs of tea and hot chocolate as J Company waited for its pick-up. As dawn broke, the Marines bantered among themselves, trading tales of firefights and narrow escapes, of wounded Iraqis and multiple surrenders, and of where we might be heading next. I had given no thought to this topic, happy enough in the knowledge that I was returning to the relative calm of Kuwait. Buoyed by their successes on the Al Faw peninsular, the boys were as eager as ever to take the fight to the Iraqis and were fervently hoping Kuwait was nothing more than a brief stopover prior to the next phase of the war. I kept my own aspirations firmly to myself.

Then, from the south, silhouetted against the early morning sky, several Chinook helicopters appeared, filling the air with the din of beating rotor blades. In seconds, stoves were extinguished, kit packed away, and the Marines trotted out onto the mudflats. The pilots brought their steeds in fast, banking hard to sit them down as close to us as possible. I felt the blast of downwash and looked up to see the visor-wearing spectre of a helicopter door gunner peering down at me over the top of a huge rotary cannon. The machine swung rapidly round and set itself down in the mud, tail-ramp already open. I wasted no time in scrambling to my feet and clambering aboard, savouring the warm blast of exhaust on my face and the smell of aviation fuel in my nostrils, which I always find unexpectedly reassuring. Within seconds everyone was onboard and the helicopter was airborne again. The flight was remarkably short and before I knew it, we were back on terra firma inside Kuwait.

Any hopes I had of a comfortable airbase with an officers’ mess and some decent tucker were swiftly dashed. I exited the Chinook, blinking in the bright morning sunlight, to be confronted by one of the bleakest patches of desert I have ever seen - it was even more featureless than Camp Gibraltar. Brilliant yellow sand stretched to the horizon in all directions, interrupted only by dozens of vehicles and tents, and countless men digging shell scrapes in the soft sand. This, it transpired, was TAA Viking, the place from which 40 Commando had launched their assault a few days earlier.
(1)
Now, however, it was home to 42 Commando in its entirety, since the trucks and other heavy equipment had been brought up by road from Camp Gib. Self-evidently, Viking was nothing more than a staging post before our next foray into Iraq. I scuffed my feet through the sand, feeling a certain sense of inevitability about my plight. I had always known that thoughts of an early return home were absurdly optimistic (it’s a facet of my yellow-livered character always to hope for an easy route out of a tight spot) but nonetheless the reality of a prolonged stay in the Gulf weighed heavily on my mind. I focused instead on digging my shell-scrape as rapidly as possible, with the express intent of climbing into it and sleeping away the day under the warm desert sun. Within minutes I had a workable hole in the ground, so I patted down the sides, dragged my bergen and webbing inside, unrolled my sleeping mat, lay down and pulled my sunhat over my face. I remember indulging in a somewhat confused fantasy in which the lovely Charlotte performed a series of unspeakable sexual acts whilst simultaneously plying me with gin and tonic, before sleep overtook me and dropped into a blissful slumber.

A short time later I was awoken unceremoniously by a boot kicking me gently in the ribs. Peering out from under my sunhat, I was confronted by OC J Company.

“Time for us to say goodbye, Harry,” he intoned. “Your services are requested by M Company.”

“The miserable sods - I’ve only just got my head down,” I replied, somewhat testily. “Tell them to wait. I shall join them later.”

“No danger of that,” laughed my tormentor. “They’re saddling up for a move right now, and you need to be with them. I suggest you get a move on or you may have a long walk in front of you.”

“A move where?” I enquired, clinging vainly to the hope of a return to civilisation.

“Umm Qasr,” came the crushing reply.

The little port town of Umm Qasr had been targeted by coalition planners in the early phases of the deployment back in Kuwait. It was of strategic importance not just to the military but also to the allied PR campaign, since a deep-water harbour was necessary in order to bring in ships laden with humanitarian aid. Looking at the situation cynically (which I usually do), the invading Americans and Brits needed to be seen to be helping the local civilians as much as possible, if only to assuage the growing groundswell of anti-war public opinion back home. The required volumes of food, clean water and medical supplies were huge and getting shipping lanes open into Iraq was therefore a big priority. The mission to take the town had been assigned to a battalion of US Marines, but evidently something had gone awry, since they were about to be displaced by the Royal Marines. I had an immediate feeling of dread. (Months later I learned that the move into Umm Qasr was indeed politically driven: the failure of the U.S. Marines to take the town had caused considerable embarrassment at senior level, primarily because it meant the supply ship HMS Sir Galahad could not embark at the port and its cargo of humanitarian aid was therefore sitting uselessly at sea, rather than undergoing a stage-managed delivery in front of the world’s press. I am reliably informed that the decision to bin the U.S. 15 Marine Expeditionary Unit in favour of the Royal Marines was taken jointly by Blair and Bush, eager as always to achieve a positive sound bite irrespective of the consequences.)

Far from being concerned at the scale of the task in front of them, the men of M Company were grinning like Cheshire cats. They had watched in quiet frustration as J Company led the charge onto the Al Faw and now it was their turn to be in pole position.
(2)
Unhappily for me, the CO had switched most of the commando’s assets to the company group, including the snipers, UMST, and yours truly. God alone knows why he thought my knowledge of armoured manoeuvre might be useful in an urban assault, but there was no arguing with the decision, so I piled my kit onto the roof of a BV and climbed into the back.
(3)
The vehicle bounced its way across the desert sand and joined the back of a lengthy convoy making its way onto a road which led northwest into Iraq. The Marines onboard opened the side windows of the BV and I watched the world go by - miles and miles of empty desert, sand and rocks bleached yellow-white by the incessant glare of the sun, with just the occasional stunted thorn bush to break up the monotony of the landscape.