Harry Flashman and the Invasion of Iraq (31 page)
“I sometimes take in lodgers for a little extra money,” Pasha told us, hesitatingly. “Two weeks ago, these two men appeared, visitors to the town, and asked if they could stay. Of course I said yes - there is nowhere else for them to stay and anyway I need the income.” Tariq and I nodded and he gestured at her to continue. “As soon as they move in, I know there is something wrong. They tell me I must stay indoors and not interfere with them. Of course I refused, then they show me the guns and insist I do as they say. So I have been a prisoner in my own home for two weeks now.” I half expected tears, but none came. She’s made of stern stuff, this girl, I thought to myself. “These men, it turns out they are from Iran. They come to start an insurgency with the local men, who we know are hotheads and stupid enough to believe anything they are told.” She sneered as she spoke about them and I began to get a sense of why she was still single - in her opinion no-one in the town measured up. “They tell these men that if they get rid of the British they will own all the oil, and that this place can become a powerful Muslim state.” The penny was beginning to drop. She looked at me as she explained: “So that is why you have had such a hostile reception in our town. Most of the young men want to get rid of the British, and the rest of the town is too afraid of these men to be seen to welcome you. It’s all so silly.” And with that she let out a deep sigh and began topping up the teacups, as if the entire episode was already forgotten. Unexpectedly it was Tariq who became animated, leaping up and down and declaring “We must hunt down these dogs and kill them!” I could think of no worse idea and I was prepared to tell him, too, but fortunately Pasha was able to calm him down before he got completely out of control. She continued to apologise profusely for the hostile reception the Brits had received, and insisted I stay for the entire evening. I would have refused but she began producing all manner of deserts - sugary little things, similar to the stuff you get in North Africa, which I adore - so I stayed and stuffed my face until I felt physically sick.
It was past midnight when Tariq and I eventually said our farewells. Pasha hugged us both and loudly declared me her “liberator”, much to the amusement of her brother. “Come visit me again,” she demanded, and I swear she winked at me as she said it. I dropped Tariq back at the canal bridge and caned the Land Rover mercilessly along the desert highway that led back to the GOSP, eager to be back behind the wire and in the safety of a camp guarded by dozens of Marines. No-one remarked on my solitary arrival so I quietly dumped the Land Rover alongside the other Recce Troop vehicles and stole silently through the compound, clambered back onto my rooftop, and collapsed exhausted into my sleeping bag. Perhaps it was the excitement from earlier in the evening, but I was as restless as a stag in rutting season, and it took me hours to drop off. I remember fantasising about tupping Pasha before eventually falling into a troubled sleep, during which I suffered nightmares about being executed by a firing squad made up of mad Iranians, my old headmaster, and the Brigade Commander.
When the bright sunshine of the next morning eventually woke me I felt as if I had barely slept at all.
My solo escapade was strictly against the rules so I was unable to tell the Headquarters staff anything about the previous evening’s happenings. But I did make a point of loudly telling the morning briefing that I had solved the riddle of Rumaylah’s hostile reception, and that since I knew the Iranians had scarpered we could expect somewhat warmer greetings from now on. The news was well received, and my deduction proved correct: within a few days the entire Assault Engineer troop was employed renovating the schoolhouse, while the rest of the Commando reverted to its usual modus operandi of low-level patrols and dishing out biscuits and sweets to the kids.
(3)
42 Commando spent a further 10 days stuck out in the desert, much of which I spent sunbathing and reading countless books and magazines that Roddy and the boys sent from home. The Marines spent their time running endless laps of the camp and lifting weights, while I watched idly from my rooftop. The only visitors to the camp were Americans, soldiers and civilians working for Halliburton, who came to survey the oil infrastructure. They may say that oil wasn’t the primary motive for war but Dick Cheney’s boys were on-site less than a fortnight after the bullets stopped flying. Frankly, I didn’t much care what the motive for the campaign was. With no armoured warfare to worry about and Rumaylah quiet once more there was virtually nothing for me to do - which is exactly how I like it.
The Marines weren’t the only people getting bored. A squadron of the RAF Regiment was stationed nearby, and they were evidently in a more self-destructive frame of mind. A couple of their number blew themselves up by driving a Land Rover into a minefield, apparently because they wanted to take a look at a burned-out Iraqi vehicle, whereupon the Engineers were scrambled to extricate them - a dangerous task which I wouldn’t do for all the tea in China. The extraction was successful, or at least it would have been if one of our Air Force comrades hadn’t ignored the white tape which marked the safe lane the Engineers had cleared through the minefield. Instead, despite the warning shouts from his colleagues, he stepped over the tape, trod on a mine, and blew his foot off. Since the damned fool had driven into the minefield in the first place this would have been poetic justice but for the fact that the explosion injured one of the Engineers. The whole foolhardy episode was difficult enough to believe but was equalled the next day by the news that one of his colleagues had deliberately injected himself in the leg with atropine, a highly toxic chemical which is used to negate the effects of nerve gas. Compared with this idiocy, running hundreds of miles round and round the GOSP was an entirely harmless activity - but all this madness was a clear sign that we needed either a meaningful tasking, or to be sent home. I need barely tell you how delighted I was when we eventually received the news that it was the latter. The rumour-mill had been rife for weeks and now that our return home had been confirmed, morale shot up.
Of course, like every military journey, the return took inordinately long to facilitate. 42 Commando was moved en masse to the port of Az Zubayr, where we were housed in enormous corrugated steel warehouses for over a week. The waiting was interminable, but eventually a convoy of ancient buses arrived, I found a vacant seat, and we were whisked over the border to Ali Al Saleem airbase in Kuwait and thence flown back to the UK. Of course, a direct flight would have been far too sensible, so instead the RAF made us waste a day in Cyprus. The aircraft finally landed at Brize Norton at 1 a.m. on a chilly night in mid-May, and I was delighted to find that my return had not gone unnoticed by my regiment, since a driver was waiting dutifully for me - a huge relief, since I had no desire to spend days in Plymouth with the Royal Marines when I could take centre stage in a cavalry unit where I would be the sole returnee from the Gulf.
The goodbyes took only a few minutes - the quicker the better as far as I was concerned, for I was eager to put some distance between me and the Marines without further delay. Perhaps it was just good manners on their behalf, but they seemed genuinely sorry to see me go.
“Well done, Harry,” said the CO, gripping me by the hand. “You’ve had a better campaign than the rest of the staff combined,” he added, grinning. “Now bugger off and get some rest - you’ve earned it.” On this last point I wholeheartedly agreed with him, so I wasted no more time and jumped into the waiting car. The last I saw of 42 Commando was a queue of men waiting patiently to board a line of coaches. For a moment I felt a pang of sorrow as we departed - although in retrospect it might have been wind, brought on by the awful RAF food. Good luck to you all, you bloody madmen, I thought to myself as my driver accelerated into the night.
NOTES
1.
The wetlands which were home to the Marsh Arabs were drained by the construction of upstream dams by the Ba’ath regime. There were many motives for this but the primary one was probably ethnic hatred: the Marsh Arabs were largely Shia Muslims and mistrusted by Saddam’s Sunni henchmen. Their lifestyle, now a thing of the past, is vividly depicted in Gavin Maxwell’s
A Reed Shaken by the Wind.
2.
Humlnt: Human Intelligence.
3.
Iranian (and other) agitators were reported throughout southern Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the war, though none were ever brought to book.
11
My welcome home was every bit as triumphant as I had hoped, and didn’t I just love it. I slept for most of the first day, but the evening was another matter - the boys in the mess gave me a hero’s welcome, breaking open the champagne and demanding to know every last detail of the deployment. They got what they wanted -I gave them chapter and verse, and of course the battles got larger and the gallant deeds got more outlandish with every bottle of booze. After a largely liquid dinner the CO joined the fray, probably in an attempt to prove he could still hold his drink. He got royally pissed and kept slapping me on the back, shouting “Good show, Harry, bloody good show!” I had fully intended to hit the town but after months in the wilderness the comfort of the mess seemed plenty sufficient for my first night back, so I propped up the bar and plied myself with bubbly until well past three. All in all it was quite a night.
The following morning I gave Roddy the slip and ducked out of camp to meet Charlotte. She looked an absolute picture - although given a four month period of abstinence (well, almost) I dare say I would have found a female sumo wrestler attractive. In any event she wasted no time in taking me home, practically tore the clothes off me, cooed over the scar on my leg, then pinned me to the sheets and pleasured herself atop me for a good hour or more.
“Oh Harry, darling, I’ve missed this,” she muttered, nibbling my ear as she ground away down below. “Really, it’s been too long.” I didn’t believe that for one moment - the randy little tart had probably been through half the mess in my absence. But then she had written to me several times a week, and sent endless text messages whenever possible, so maybe there was some truth to it. In any event I didn’t much mind - she was a talented lover and I spent a thoroughly enjoyable day getting shot of several months of pent up tension.
My rehabilitation into the QRH took very little time, whereupon I took my post-operational tour leave, which amounted to just over three weeks. I spent most of it swanning around the countryside visiting old pals, playing polo, gate crashing the occasional wedding, and sponging tickets to Henley and Wimbledon from the Pagets (the better-bred side of my family has always been well connected when it comes to the Season). A thoroughly enjoyable three weeks it was too, being feted as a returning hero everywhere I went. But before I knew it the holiday was over, I was back at the regimental depot, Iraq was a fading memory, and I was pushing a pen for a living once more. Summer gave way to autumn and the interminable exercises on Salisbury Plain that are the blight of any cavalryman’s life, and the only thing of note which changed is that Charlotte and I became an item. It seemed only fair to make it public after almost six months of seeing her on the sly, and anyway her sexual prowess was, if anything, growing -she certainly became a lot more adventurous (I won’t go into the details here, you’ll have to use your imagination. She certainly did).
Christmas arrived and was the usual tawdry family affair, followed by a spectacularly drunken New Year’s Eve, in which I disgraced myself by staggering out of a fancy dress party and vomiting onto the leather seats of Charlie Valdez-Welch’s open-top MG. (Serves him right too -I ask you, what kind of buffoon drives around with the roof down in January?) I finished the night back at Charlotte’s place - she wasn’t best pleased by my bedraggled appearance and refused to go near me, so I spent what little was left of the night sprawled on her sofa. My drunken slumber was interrupted by her screams of excitement at about ten o’clock - an ungodly hour when one has only been asleep since five. I fervently hoped that whatever caused the squealing didn’t involve me, but of course it did.
“Haaaarrrrryyyyy!” shouted the little minx as she scooted into the lounge, dressed only in a long T-shirt. She jumped on top of me, pounding me excitedly with her fists. I could still taste the bile in the back of my throat and was on the verge of gagging, but the news she announced washed the hangover clean out of my mind. “Guess what?!” hollered Charlotte. “I just got a text message from Roddy and . . .” she paused, grinning, while I rubbed my eyes. “You’re in the New Year’s Honours list. You’ve been awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal!”
I could barely believe it myself but it was true nonetheless, printed in black and white in the morning newspapers. Numerous names from 3 Commando Brigade and 42 Commando were also listed - the CO got an OBE,
(1)
while the CO of 40 Commando received a DSO.
(2)
But there were plenty of medals awarded for bravery too, including at least one Military Cross, several MiDs
(3)
and a fistful of Queen’s Commendations for Valuable Service. The Navy and Air Force received a fair number, as did 16 Air Assault Brigade, and the boys in 1 Div -although God alone knows what they did to deserve them. Lastly, it was heart-warming to see a few old chums in 7 Armoured Brigade receive recognition for their part in the proceedings. But each time I scanned the list, one name stood out above all others: Captain Harry Flashman QRH, awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal.
The reception at the Palace took place a few weeks later, and a fine affair it was too. I, of course, was in uniform while Charlotte rushed out and bought herself a new frock from Harvey Nichols (she looked quite a picture in it too). So many medals were being dished out from the Iraq campaign that the reception was somewhat overwhelmed by the military, but there was no shortage of celebrities too. Palace officials and minions rushed around, clucking advice as they vainly attempted to herd us into the right place at the right time.