Harry Flashman and the Invasion of Iraq (8 page)

“It’s not joining a commando unit that worries me old chap, it’s the thought of leaving you buggers without the benefit of my leadership and experience. War can be a terrible thing you know, and you boys back here will doubtless have a hell of a time of it . . .”

His paperback book came flying in my direction.

“Bloody hell, you really have a cheek sometimes,” he chortled. Then, with mock gravitas, added, “We all know it will be a struggle without you, but we’ll do our best to soldier on in the face of adversity. I should think the bigger question is whether 42 have got enough blokes to stop you getting into trouble. If the CO has got any sense, he’ll have you making tea in the ops room and not let you out of his sight for the duration.”

I set about packing up my limited worldly belongings. It didn’t take more than a few minutes and I found myself with best part of an hour to spare before my driver was due to turn up. I whiled away most of it outside Des & Kit’s cafe, saying a fond farewell to numerous members of the brigade staff whilst ensuring that I maintained the famous Flashman stiff upper lip. I might be quaking inside but there was great PR mileage in joining a commando group, so I took the opportunity to milk it for all it was worth. Eventually the laughter and bonhomie was interrupted by a loud hooting from a nearby Land Rover horn, and I spotted my driver looking impatiently at me through the heat haze and dust. I strode over to him.

“Are you looking for someone?” I enquired.

“Yes Sir - you,” he replied. “Land Rover to Camp Gibraltar?”

“Right, well I suggest you get out and give me a hand with my bags. If you’re not too busy, that is,” I added.

He looked for a moment as if he was about to say something, thought better of it, and reluctantly climbed out from behind the steering wheel. I strode off towards the officers’ accommodation, the driver trailing in my wake. Inside the tent I passed him my grip and webbing, leaving him wrestling with both as I carried my bergen and rifle out to the vehicle.

“Bloody hell, Sir, I’m a driver not a bag-carrier,” he grumbled as he caught me up.

“Really? Well I’m a cavalry officer and you’ll be a bloody toilet attendant if you don’t shut up and start providing some assistance,” I retorted. “I’m only asking you to carry a couple of bags, not parachute naked into an enemy minefield. I thought you were supposed to be a commando?” Peeved, the fellow just shot me a sidelong glance and went into a sulk.

Camp Gibraltar, the place where my arrival coach had stopped briefly a few short weeks earlier, was around an hour’s drive north of Camp Commando. The desert on either side of the highway was picture-book yellow, featureless and flat, punctuated only by the occasional camel train barely visible through the heat haze. My thoughts drifted as the Land Rover sped along the highway. It was still only February and already the air was starting to warm up viciously during the middle of the day. Carrying heavy loads, wearing body armour and NBC clothing and breathing through a respirator is difficult enough in any conditions, but the stifling heat of the Middle East meant that our troops would become physically degraded within a very short time. It didn’t take the brains of an archbishop to know that the war would have to begin before the real heat of the summer arrived - I reckoned the end of March was the latest possible kick-off date, perhaps even earlier depending on how quickly the hot weather snuck up on us.

After a time, through the dust, I made out a criss-cross of dirt roads cutting through the desert sand, and the earthwork ramparts of a temporary military encampment in the middle of nowhere. The Land Rover slowed and then veered off to the right hand side of the road, bouncing onto a dirt track running perpendicular to the highway. The driver quickly slid shut his window and closed the air vents as dust kicked up around the vehicle. I did likewise but nevertheless the leaky nature of the Land Rover meant we were covered in a fine film of dust even before we reached the first checkpoint, just a quarter of a mile from the tar road. A bedraggled looking soldier wearing goggles and an ill-fitting helmet asked us for some ID, which we duly displayed before driving on along the dirt road. At first there seemed to be no sign of the camp but then I saw that our dirt track was running parallel to the earthwork ramparts once again. We passed a large sign announcing the presence of the Commando Logistics Regiment, then shortly afterwards another announcing the home of 59 Commando Engineer Squadron. Finally, we swung into a gateway where a young looking Marine asked us for our ID again. Inside was row upon row of tents, many of which were flying union flags with a few Welsh dragons and St Andrew’s Crosses thrown in for good measure. The headquarters was positioned at the far end of all the accommodation tents, evident primarily from the numerous vehicles parked in close proximity. This, then, was the home of 42 Commando - and a more desolate armpit of a place one couldn’t have wished for. Beyond the earth walls of the camp there was nothing but empty desert for dozens of miles. Inside the camp there was nothing but the tents, a fistful of shipping containers, and a couple of portakabin-style buildings which functioned as the ablution blocks for over 700 men. My spirits, already low, took a further battering as I realised the paucity of the living conditions compared with the Brigade Headquarters, which itself was hardly the lap of luxury. It was exactly the kind of isolated, frugal existence that the Marines would love, especially as it ensured that officers and men would share living quarters. (For reasons I have yet to fathom, this holds immense appeal to the egalitarian ranks of the Marine Corps.) Still, this wasn’t the moment for moping - there would be plenty of time for that in the weeks to come. I needed to introduce myself to the CO and his staff, and find myself a bed-space somewhere.

My sulking driver dropped my bags outside the headquarters tent and sped off, presumably in a hurry to get away before I had the opportunity to task him with any more work. A stiff breeze was scudding across the camp, blowing little puffs of sand along the floor and ensuring that vehicle tracks and footprints disappeared almost as rapidly as they were made.

On the far side of the camp a squad of Marines in PT kit ran along the perimeter wall, sand and dust billowing up in the breeze from the combined action of 20-odd pairs of training shoes. Overhead, the sun was beating down and I could make out the dull thump of distant rotor blades from a passing transport helicopter. Asides from that noise though, the camp seemed remarkably quiet. I lifted the flap of the tent and stepped inside.

The commando headquarters tent was divided into three discreet sections. There was a large briefing area, into which I stepped, which also housed the duty signallers and the chief clerk. Beyond it lay a smaller briefing area, which housed a large map table and various workstations adorned with dust-covered laptop computers. This area was a hive of activity, with around a dozen officers and warrant officers all poring over a huge black-and-white aerial photograph of, I presumed, some not-too-distant part of Iraq. At the back of this briefing area hung a large curtain, beyond which was housed 42 Commando’s intelligence section. Nobody challenged my entrance to the ops room and all inside seemed engrossed in their various activities, so I placed my rifle in the rather homespun wooden rack provided and then stood for a few seconds and earwigged at the on-going conversation.

“... if the Iraqis launch an armoured counter-attack, they’ve really only got two possible routes to follow - here, and here. We can get a blocking force deployed on those routes pretty bloody quickly once we hit the ground. That’s got to be our first priority. Then we can start sending probing patrols north and west to find out where the enemy depth positions are . . .” I peered into the group, but could not make out any of the detail of the air photograph they were examining. However, I knew from the Brigade Headquarters briefings that 42 Commando was flying directly onto the Al Faw peninsular, right on Iraq’s south-eastern tip. Equally, I knew the strategic significance of grabbing the Al Faw oil installations intact. It was a distinct possibility that the Iraqis would blow the high-pressure oil pipelines, thereby flooding the northern Gulf with crude. The environmental damage would be huge, and so would the PR damage back home, so the pressure was on to ensure that whoever landed on the Al Faw did it quickly and cleanly, and allowed the Iraqis the least possible opportunity to create any deliberate collateral damage. 40 Commando - the sister unit to the one I found myself in - would lead the assault, while 42 Commando landed on their north-western flank to deal with Iraqi depth positions and block any possible counter attack. The wide open spaces inland from the tip of the peninsular were potentially good country for armoured warfare, so 42 Commando was to have an attached squadron of Welsh Cavalry to provide an armoured recce screen to their north and west.
(1)

The conversation in front of me continued with further gesticulating at the aerial photographs: “What anti-tank assets are we deploying here? We can’t claim to have deployed a blocking force if we’ve only got blokes with light weapon systems, and we can’t get our vehicle-mounted Milans in until the LCACs are functioning.”
(2)
(3)

This was immediately countered by someone else in the group. “Well, we can deploy man packed Milan if we have to. Or maybe we could bring in underslung vehicles by helicopter?”

This was answered by a tall, sandy-haired figure standing at the top of the planning table, whom I quickly realised was the Commanding Officer. “We could do that if we absolutely had to - although we’ll need to find out whether the American helicopters can undersling our vehicles - but I’d rather explore other alternatives first. It seems to me we can have a pretty effective block in place just by using the organic assets of our close-combat companies, plus UMST.”
(4)

There was a murmuring of assent to this last remark, although clearly there was still some concern about the unknown enemy dispositions on the Al Faw. The problem was exacerbated by the date palm plantations and other greenery on the northern side of the peninsula, where fresh water from the Shat-al-Arab waterway was used to irrigate the land. I vividly remembered from my Kosovo days how easy it had been for the Serbs to hide their tanks in the wooded areas of southern Yugoslavia. All the air photographs in the world were no good if your enemy chose to position his armoured formations in woodland - and frankly they would have to be pretty stupid to do anything else. Yet here we were, about to embark on an opposed landing in country which was home to hundreds of acres of date palm plantations. I shuddered quietly at the idea and consoled myself with the thought that while 42 Commando’s fighting companies would be slugging it out on the Al Faw, the Commando headquarters would presumably not fly in from Kuwait until the area was deemed relatively safe.

The planning group broke up and, their eyes no longer fixed on the photographs and maps, they noticed there was a stranger waiting for them. I stepped forward and introduced myself.

“Ah, Harry, nice to meet you,” exclaimed the CO, holding out his hand. “Were we expecting you?” Then, looking over his shoulder at the adjutant, “Were we expecting him?”

“Yes, Colonel,” responded the adjutant. “I got a phone call this morning from Brigade to say they were sending him up.”

“Well why wasn’t I bloody told about it?” grumbled the CO. “I’m always the last person to know about our new arrivals. It’s faintly embarrassing not knowing who all these people are.” But it was all said in good humour and it seemed that he was genuinely pleased to have me on board. I guessed - correctly, as it turned out - that 42 Commando was being deluged with new arrivals in a similar way to the brigade headquarters, and I was therefore just the latest in a long line of unexpected visitors. The adjutant later made a count of them and the total was in the dozens with cap badges including the Royal Navy, RAF, Joint NBC Regiment, Royal Engineers and now, of course, the Hussars. Before I could depart the CO invited me to lunch in his tent, which turned out to be much less formal than it sounded. The tent was a scaled-down version of the standard accommodation marquees which now littered Kuwait, and the furniture was limited to four canvas camp beds. Lunch was even more meagre than the offering at Camp Commando, consisting only of mug of lukewarm tea and a disgusting American ration pack - but I was famished, so I ate the thing anyway.
(5)

“Tell me a bit about yourself,” asked the CO. “Your knowledge of armoured manoeuvre will be in demand in the headquarters, so I’d like to know what experience you’ve got.”

I wasn’t expecting a job interview but managed to stutter out a rough summary of my military CV: Bosnia, Northern Ireland, Congo, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, plus a few exercises and the ubiquitous pass at Junior Staff College. The CO seemed entirely unimpressed, which rather took the wind of out of my sails.

“All very good, but what else have you done?” he asked. Then, to clarify, “Frankly, any medal-collecting war tourist could have managed a raft of peacekeeping operations. They’re two-a-penny these days. What I’m interested in is your tactical knowledge of armoured deployments. What makes you a particular expert on armoured warfare?”

This was much harder to answer as so much of my time had, as he alluded to, been spent away from my regiment. I waffled out a rather weak answer and pointed out that I had spent some time in both Germany and Bosnia with a Challenger squadron back in the mid-nineties. I was expecting another stiff questioning about my exact role but the answer seemed to placate him and the conversation moved on to the current political situation and the impending hostilities.

“So how long do you think we’ll be stuck here?” he asked, his impatience transparent through the question. “You’ve come from Brigade, what’s the word on the street about when we’ll cross the start line?”

This was potentially stony ground. I was rapidly realising that the ambition of most Royal Marines was simply to get stuck into a good fight sooner rather than later and this mindset wasn’t limited to the boys, it was reflected throughout the hierarchy as well. I was savvy enough to know that my inner craving for a peaceful solution to the situation - not to mention a rapid (and safe) return home to Blighty - would be as welcome as a jobby in a swimming pool. No, this was a time for a spot of the traditional Flashman bravado.