Bravo Two Zero

12

Some time in the afternoon of the 6^th, they came in and handcuffed and blindfolded me again. They picked me up, and I thought I was off for another interrogation. I went outside and started to follow the old familiar route, but this time we took a strange turning, and I found myself being put into the back of a vehicle.

I leaned forward, head down to release pressure on my hands. It was lovely and warm in the car, and I could hear the birds singing. It was gorgeous weather. I was full of dread.

The car was big. An old American thing, I assumed, like they all seemed to be.

“If you try to escape,” somebody said, “we will kill the other two. And if they escape, you will be killed. So you see, it is pointless.”

Did that mean that Dinger and Stan were coming too? I waited for someone else to get into the car, but no one did. Both doors were closed. I was alone in the back. There were two fellows in the front, and they both spoke excellent English.

“Do you know where you’re going now, Andy?” the driver asked as we set off.

“No, I have no idea.”

“We’re taking you to the British Embassy. You will now be going home to your family. No problems.”

“Thank you very much.”

They started laughing to themselves and I went along with it, playing the idiot.

“No, we are only joking, Andy. You’ll be going home one day, but not yet. Not for a long time yet.”

We drove for a few minutes in silence.

“Have you heard of Ali Baba?” one of them asked.

“Yes, it’s an old film which they play every Christmas. They always have Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves on.”

“Yes, well this is where you are. You’re in the land of Ali Baba, in Baghdad. The thieves of Baghdad. A very beautiful city. But no longer, because everybody’s dying. You people, you are coming in and bombing our places. Children are dead. Entire families are dying. It’s no more the great land of Ali Baba; it’s all demolished. But when we win, we will rebuild, no problem. Fantastic place. Ali Baba.”

I nodded and agreed. They turned on the radio and scanned through the stations. Every one sounded the same aggressive rhetoric or wailing Arabic songs. They were enjoying themselves, driving along with the windows open, not a care in the world.

I listened to the sounds of the city. We stopped at lights, hooted, and people gob bed off. Music blared out of shops; there was all the usual hustle and bustle of a city. The characters suddenly started laughing and chattering.

“We’re just looking at your two friends in front of us,” one of them said. “They are leaning against one another, sleeping. They must be very good friends.”

This was great. It confirmed that Dinger and Stan were with me. It was a fantastic feeling.

The boys started smoking and were very jovial. We drove on for another 30 minutes or so.

“Yes, we’re going to somewhere else in Baghdad.

You’ll enjoy this place. Very good place. We were only joking about the embassy.”

People reached in through the windows when we arrived at what they announced was the military prison, slapping me on the head, pulling my mustache. Nothing too serious, all very neighborly stuff.

I heard barriers being lifted, gates being opened. We drove forward a bit more and stopped. They got me out of the car and put a blanket over my head. I was led up to a door and along a wide corridor with concrete floors. There were echoes of talking, of bolts being opened and closed, the jangling of chains and keys.

This place wasn’t damp, but it was freezing cold. They led me into a cell. I was made to sit on the floor, and my handcuffs and blindfold were taken off. I saw soldiers dressed in olive drab and red berets, wearing the old ‘37 webbing-pattern belt and gaiters, all immaculately blancoed in white. They were military policemen. I spotted an officer and a couple of blokes in civvies. They closed the door and left me.

The door to the cell was something that the sheriff would put you behind in a western. The bars were covered with a blanket to stop me seeing out. There was one fluorescent light, right in the middle of the ceiling, which was about 15 feet high. Also right at the top was a small slit window. A shaft of light beamed through. The bottom half of the walls were painted red, the top magnolia. And at first glance, that was all there was to see. Then I saw the scratchings on the wall, in Arabic. There were more pictures of doves with chains around their legs, and a drawing of a woman.

I paced out the cell. It was about 12 feet by 9.

I strained my ears and heard other doors being opened and closed. I assumed that Dinger and Stan were getting banged up as well. At least we were all in the same place. And compared with the interrogation center this was Buckingham Palace.

Had they finished with us now, or what? I wasn’t too sure and I didn’t really care. I loved this place. It was wonderful.

Fifteen minutes later the doors opened again. I thought I’d better start switching on and showing some respect. To turn the situation to your advantage you have to make an effort, get some sort of friendship going.

As I got slowly to my feet, wincing with the injuries, a new character came into the cell. He was wearing civilian clothes, but with a DPM combat jacket over the top. He was about 5’3” tall and had white hair. On his face he had a pair of really thick glasses and a big happy smile.

“Would you like to be with your friends?” he beamed.

“Yes, I would, very much.”

He took me by the arm and led me to another cell three doors down. It was empty.

Yeah, I thought-good fucking stitch! For a few moments there I’d been all happy that I was going to see Dinger and Stan. I sat down on the floor and tried not to show my feelings.

Two minutes later the door opened and there was Dinger. We had a big hug and a shake of hands. Then another couple of minutes later Stan came stumbling in, supported on either side by guards. In his hand he carried a tray of rice. As the guards locked us in and left us we looked at one another in disbelief, then started gob bing off.

“Chris and Vince?” I asked.

“Vince is dead,” Stan said. “Exposure. I got split from Chris; I don’t know what happened to him. What about the other three?”

I said that Mark was dead, and probably also Legs and Bob-despite what the Iraqis had told me.

We fell into silence and started eating. We heard the sound of footsteps and keys in the corridor and stood up again. The door opened and a major entered. He introduced himself as the prison governor.

“What happened where you were, I was not responsible for,” he said in better English than mine. “I am only responsible for you now. We will feed you and we will look after you. If you are good, we will be good to you. If there is trouble, you will be punished.”

Just 5’6” tall and small-framed, he was smartly dressed, well groomed, and fresh smelling. He seemed genuine. If we played the game, we should be Okay. As he spoke, however, I couldn’t help noticing that the guards behind him didn’t seem to have the same benign smile on their faces. They looked every bit as brutish as the people we were used to. They were very young, and they would have things to prove to us-and to each other. I didn’t doubt that when the cat was away, the guards would play.

Once the major had gone, we came to certain decisions based on experience, training, and the advice of the Marine POW.

We would remain always the gray man, never allowing ourselves to show a reaction or become overconfident. We weren’t out of the woods yet, not by a long way.

We would show respect to the guards. Being young bastards, they were almost certain to tear the arse out of the situation if we were abusive or truculent. By being respectful we might also be able to get information or take some advantage, which would take us halfway towards another aim, which was to get some form of relationship going. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but you don’t know until you try. We didn’t know how long we were going to be there for-it could be days, weeks, or years. We would try to get some sort of fraternal thing going, based on us all being soldiers together, which might bring us medicine, food, and little goodies.

We’d use this time as best we could to sort ourselves out and prepare ourselves for escape, adjusting both physically and mentally. I still had my escape map and compass, and so did Dinger. Physically we’d sort ourselves out, hopefully helped by more reasonable supplies of food, and mentally we’d spend as much time as we could doing map studies. We knew we were in Baghdad, so if we learnt the surrounding area we’d have some form of chance if we managed to escape. The escape maps were not detailed enough to show the city in street form, but they indicated the main features on the ground like rivers, salt lakes, and high ground. All we had to do was get out of Baghdad.

The first thing to do, as ever, was just to tune in to the new environment, hoping that there was going to be some sort of routine. We didn’t want to screw up the fact that we were all together. We would use the system, rather than fight against it.

During the course of the first day and night, guards were coming and going nonstop. Each time we’d stand up and face them. They were still in their teens, most of them, which made them more authoritative and overbearing. They never appeared in groups of less than three, and they always carried pistols. They were clearly very wary of us. On one of the visits our boots were taken away from us and replaced with white pumps without laces.

I asked for water. They came back with a pitcher and a cup. We drank some, and then put the pitcher back down on the floor as if it was going to stay there. They didn’t question it.

“How do we go to the toilet?” Stan asked.

“You go when we say you go.”

“We’re suffering from diarrhea and stomachaches, and we’re being sick.

We need a bucket or something so we can go.”

A bucket turned up. They were small victories, but encouraging signs that we could manipulate our circumstances. That first night was a happy, giggly, taking the piss sort of time. We heard mumbling in the near distance and guessed that there were other prisoners. We eventually worked out that they were right next door to us. How many of them, we couldn’t tell.

There was a door right at the end of the corridor, and once the guards had slammed that shut they seemed to be out of earshot. Nobody had told us that there was a no talking rule, but it was safer to assume that there was.

Tapping on the wall with our tin mug, we knocked out a simple identification code to see if the person in the next cell was an ally. Only a Westerner would recognize the friendly pattern of knocks you would do on the front door of a friend’s house: tap, tapetty, tap tap -to which the reply, of course, is: tap tap. We got the answer we were hoping for. The contact was good for our morale, and probably theirs. It was a good feeling to have got something going on the very first night.

We started to speculate about our situation. Were the other members of the patrol here? Was this a staging post? Would we be here for the duration?

“We didn’t know where the hell you guys had got to,” Stan said. “Vince was babbling about aircraft and TACBE, and Chris and I remembered hearing jets. We worked out that Vince was telling us that you’d stopped and tried to make contact with them. We sat on high ground looking through the night sight, but there was no sign of you. We tried to raise you on TACBE, but no answer. In the end we decided to press on, hoping you’d keep on the bearing and we’d meet up.”

They carried on for about four hours, and then it was coming to first light. Chris and Stan were worried about being caught in the open. Vince was out of the decision making; he stood swaying in the wind and rain as the others ran around looking for somewhere to hide.

Stan found a tank berm about 6 feet deep, with tank tracks leading away from it that were about knee deep. They led Vince into one of the tracks and lay down either side of him. Throughout the night Chris and Stan took it in turns to sleep. The man who was awake kept a watchful eye on Vince.

First light came and Stan had a auick look around. To his horror, he found that the tank berm was only about 600 meters from some sort of enemy position-either a hut or a box vehicle with aerials, it was hard to tell. They were stuck there now until last light.

It started to snow. Soon the snow turned to sleet, and the tank track filled with slush. They were soaking wet. The temperature dropped.

They had very little food left, just a couple of packets of biscuits between them. Everything else had gone in the berg ens

As it started to come to last light, they crawled into the berm and stood up. They’d been lying in freezing water for twelve hours. Stan had lost all feeling in his hands and feet; Chris’s joints were frozen. They moved around in circles, frog-marching Vince between them. When darkness had fallen and it was time to leave, they were so cold that the only way they could pick up their weapons was by cradling them in their arms.

Vince was soon lagging behind. He stopped in his tracks at one point and called the other two back. He complained about his hands, muttering that they had turned black. Chris looked at them and saw that he was wearing black leather gloves. “They’ll soon get better if you put them in your pockets, mate,” he said.

The next time they stopped, Vince was totally incoherent. Stan and Chris huddled around him, but it wasn’t much use. They had to keep going or they’d freeze. They were on high ground, crossing bare rock and large patches of snow. Chris was in front with the compass, but the cold was getting to him. He was doing everything in slow motion.

The three men spread out as they climbed a gradient at their different speeds. Stan stopped to let Vince overtake him; he wanted to keep an eye on him. But Vince didn’t appear. Stan turned around; Vince was nowhere to be seen. Stan called to Chris and they both went back. Visibility was down to a few feet in the blinding blizzard as they retraced their footsteps in the snow. They got to a large area of bare rock. They couldn’t find the trail the other side.

They had to make a decision. They were both going down with hypothermia. It was agony standing still; they had to get moving again. In the end they just looked at each other, then turned and headed back up the hill.

Stan and Chris walked all that night, coming off the high ground at about 0530. They came into a shallow wadi about three feet deep and cuddled together. As first light came the weather cleared; the sun came out, and for the first time in several days they felt warmth on their faces.

The sound of goats came at about 1400, and sure enough they got compromised by an old herder. This one was wearing a tattered tweed overcoat. Stan couldn’t help thinking how warm it looked and how good it would be to eat warm goat meat.

The old boy seemed quite friendly as he pointed east. Drawing pictures in the sand, he indicated food, a house, a vehicle. Chris looked at Stan. Did they kill him? It would protect their concealment, but was there anybody else about who was expecting him?

Stan was keen to investigate the vehicle. “I’ll go down, bring it back, and we’ll shoot off. We’ll be at the border by tonight,” he said.

They made their RVs, actions on, and warning arrangements, and Stan set off due east with the old boy and his goats. He left his belt kit with Chris to look less conspicuous, and wrapped his shamag around his head.

After a short while the goat herder wandered off at a tangent but again pointed east. Stan continued.

The hut was exactly where the old man had said, but there were two vehicles parked outside instead of one. Stan OP’d it for about twenty minutes. Nothing stirred. If the keys were in the vehicle, he’d just take it there and then and go. If they weren’t, he’d make a room entry on the house. He’d get to the door, kick it in, and take on whatever was there.

As he started to approach the vehicles, an Iraqi soldier came out of the house. He looked as surprised as Stan was. He made for the first vehicle and tried to pull a weapon out. Stan downed him with his 203, and the body slumped over the driver’s seat. The house was less than 60 feet away, and the door was open. Six or seven squad dies came flying out in confusion. Stan got three hits off, and then he had a stoppage. It was too late for stoppage drills. He ran to the nearest vehicle, the one with the body in. The soldier was still groaning. Stan pushed him aside. No key in the ignition. He was still fumbling for it in the man’s pockets when he felt the muzzle of a rifle jab into his ribs.

Stan turned around and stared at them. There were five jundies left.

They appeared very undisciplined, screaming and shouting at each other. They fired into the air and into the ground each side of him. He wasn’t expecting to survive. They came forward cautiously and then one of them summoned the courage to smash him with a rifle butt. The others piled in.

They put him into the other vehicle and took him to a military installation near the Euphrates. Stan entered the tactical questioning phase. He was interrogated for most of the night, handcuffed and blindfolded. The interrogators spoke very good English. Some had trained in the UK. A major who had trained at Sandhurst said, “Everyone’s very sad with you at the moment. They want to take your life.”

Stan denied everything except the Big Four. They beat him badly and only stopped when he fell unconscious. When he came to, he started to go into the cover story. He told them he had done a medical degree in Australia and gone to London. Because of his medical experience he had got roped in through the TA to become part of a search and rescue team.

“I want to cooperate in any way I can,” he said. “All I am is a doctor who dropped out.”

He was questioned on medical techniques, and they brought in a doctor to confirm his story. It went well, but the rest of his story was starting to fall apart. They searched the area in which Stan said the helicopter had crash-landed but could find no sign of wreckage. “Possibly the aircraft took off again,” he said, but they looked dubious.

Two or three days later, Stan was moved to an interrogation center. The reception party beat him with batons. He was made to kneel in front of the panel of interrogators. He was thrashed with hose pipes whipped, beaten with a pole. At one stage they pulled back his head and held a red-hot poker in front of his eyes. They didn’t carry out the threat to blind him, but they did use the poker elsewhere on his body.

We told Stan our stories and finally collapsed into sleep. I woke up in the night with my stomach tugging at me. We’d all had four or five liquid shits in the short time we’d been there. We were dehydrating drastically, but at least we could replenish the loss now.

It was pitch-dark. Lying on the floor, feeling relatively safe, I started to think about home.

There was another bombing raid in the distance. Flashes of light came through the high slit window. As ever the bomb blasts were rather nice, giving a sense of security, a feeling that we weren’t the only ones there. And best of all, they also gave us a possible means of escape if we took direct hits.

The main gate of the block was opened after first light. We heard chains rattling and keys going into locks, and then the sound of a metal, corrugated-type door the other side of our wall being opened and people talking and walking about. We heard the base of a metal bucket clanking on the floor, followed by the sound of the metal handle hitting the side.

Then we heard, “Russell! Russell!”

There was a mumbled reply.

Further down the corridor there was the same banging of buckets. Then “David! David!”

This one was definitely American. When he heard his name called, he replied with a resounding “Yo!”

The guards were shouting at this David character. They shut his door and came down the corridor to our cell. The door opened and we got to our feet. We didn’t know what to expect. There were three of them: one little bloke who said we were to call him Jeral, one big fat thing with glasses, and a really young kid with curly blond hair. Jeral carried a bucket while the others covered him, pistols drawn. They seemed keen to throw their weight around with the new blokes on the block.

“Names?” the fat one demanded.

“Dinger. Stan. Andy,” Dinger said.

He handed us three small plastic bowls, into which he tipped a small ration of rice and water mixture from the bucket. We were issued with two more mugs and given a brew of cold black tea from a battered old teapot. I thought it was Christmas.

When they left we had our first chance to look around the cell in daylight. There was a nail high up one wall, sticking out a couple of inches from the cement surface. Deciding it might come in handy, I as the lightest was given a leg up and jiggled it until I managed to prize it free. Dinger used it to mark where the light was shining on to the wall, as some sort of check on the passage of time.

We sat down and ate the rice, licking the bowls clean. We took sips of cold tea as we pondered what might happen next. The same three guards returned ten minutes later with the major.

“You’re in my prison now,” he repeated. “I want no misdemeanors from you. If you cause me trouble, I will return the compliment. You’re only together because the officer yesterday decided to put you together. He says to inform you that we know that you are dangerous men, and that if we have any trouble with you, we are to just shoot you.”

It must have been a reference to the COP platoon story, which made us an unknown quantity compared with the airmen they were used to. Either that, or because we looked like wild men of the north with our matted beards, scabs, and bruises.

“Any attempt to escape or to aggravate us and we’ll shoot, it’s as easy as that,” he said.

“Is there any possibility of emptying our bucket, sir?” I asked. “We have bad stomachs and it is filling up.”

He gob bed off to one of the blokes and said, “Yes, take the bucket.”

Stan picked it up and followed a guard.

The major said, “You will be fed, and you’re lucky to be fed because you’ve come over here to kill our children. There is to be no noise-no talking, no shouting. Do you understand?”

While he was talking, Dinger spotted the outline of a cigarette packet under his shirt.

“Excuse me, sir, is it possible that I can have a cigarette?”

Dinger was smiling away. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We were trying our hardest to come over as friendly, nice, polite, and courteous. The major unbuttoned his shirt and took the pack from a pocket in a T-shirt underneath. He handed Dinger a cigarette, but he didn’t give him a light, so that was Dinger fucked. He spent the rest of the day looking at it wistfully and holding it under his nose.

Stan had tried to gather as much information as he could. All he could tell us was that there were a number of cells, with the doors sealed with blankets or rice-sack covers that were marked, ironically, FROM THE AMERICAN RICE BOARD TO THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ. At the bottom of the corridor there was a gate, and another corridor that led out into a courtyard, with yet another metal gate beyond that. That was as far as he had been able to see. Everything seemed to be self-contained within the one unit, with only one way in and out.

It appeared that we shared the ablution block with the guards. Their washing was hanging on lines. In one corner was a large oil barrel which was filled with water. There was a long concrete sink with about four or five taps coming off it, and normal Arab toilets which were blocked as usual. According to Stan the whole place stank.

A week passed. Sometimes they would come into our cell three times a day, sometimes twice, sometimes six or seven times. We could hear squad dies continually toing and froing, doing their washing, and just generally mooching about.

We were fed irregularly as well. Sometimes the bucket would come at breakfast time, sometimes in the late afternoon, sometimes at last light. Meals always consisted of rice soup or boiled rice, real dreggy stuff with grit and mud in it. They always told us we were lucky to have it. One time we were given bones that people had been chewing. We tucked in hungrily.

They must have watched one of those prison films where you get indoctrinated by radio, because every morning at first light they turned on a radio that then blasted away outside our window. It was like having a loudspeaker blaring into the cell, aggressive rhetoric punctuated by the occasional English word like “Bush” or “America.” Then there would be prayers, then the rhetoric would start up again. It only stopped at last light, and it drove us all crazy.

We were bombed every night. There had always been sporadic firing around the city from antiaircraft guns, some of which were sited in our compound. We’d feel the shudder of the guns on our roof and hear the sounds of the gun crews arguing and shouting. What they never seemed to realize was that by the time you’ve heard an aircraft it’s out of range anyway.

On the night of the 13^th there was a massive amount of small-arms fire in the streets around the prison, which went on for twenty to thirty minutes.

“What the fuck’s going on here?” Dinger said.

He and Stan lifted me up to the slit window, and I just managed to pull my head up high enough to see tracer going horizontal. It was bouncing everywhere.

“Must be some form of revolution or coup going on. That is one major firefight.”

A few nights later we decided that we’d try and make contact with the characters in the other cells. We knew that the bloke next door was called David and was an American. We weren’t sure about Russell. We decided to initiate some form of contact with them. We risked a beating or worse if we were caught, but we decided it was worth it. If they were released or escaped, they could report our names.

Last thing at night, when the guards finished their duty, they would close up the main gate from the corridor and then go out to the courtyard. It was a fair assumption that once we’d heard the final gate close, they would be out of earshot. I got right up to our door, covered by its rice bag, and called for help. If a guard responded, I would just say that one of us was really ill and needed attention.

We heard nothing.

I called out, “David! David!”

We heard rustlings, and then “What? What?”

“How long have you been here?”

“A few days.”

He said that he and another transport driver, a woman, had strayed over the border and been shot. He had received a stomach wound, but had no idea what had happened to the woman.

“Who’s further down?” Dinger asked.

“A Marine aviator called Russell.”

“Russell! Russell!”

He responded and we all swapped names.

“What have you heard?” I asked him.

Russell Sanborn had been shot down by a SAM missile while at 10,000 feet over Kuwait. He’d only been in the prison for a couple of days. We concluded that we were the only prisoners and agreed we would try to talk again.

One morning, on about the 15^th or 16^th, the guards came in, and we stood up as usual and smiled at them. We’d got a bit of a routine going now. We’d say “Good morning,” and they’d say “Good morning” back, and one of us would then go out and empty the bucket.

There were no smiles this morning. The guards were accompanied by a young officer, who pointed at me and said, “You-you come with me.”

He had a white bandage blindfold that he put around my eyes. My hands were cuffed in front of me, and a blanket was put over my head. Escorted by guards, the officer started leading me away from the prison. He held my arm under the blanket and dragged me along. I looked down through my blindfold and watched the ground. We went through the gate, stopped awhile while he spoke to somebody, then carried on.

We were moving fairly fast when he walked me straight into a lamppost.

The surprise of it knocked me over. My nose started to pour with blood. He thought it was brilliant. We went into a building, up some stairs, and into a room. I was pushed up against a sideboard and told to sit down and cross my legs, facing the wall. The doors closed. I didn’t have a clue what was going to happen next, but assumed the worst. A minute later the blanket and blindfold were ripped off, and I was told to stand up and turn around.

I was in an office. The lighting was strong and harsh. There was a chair against one wall and a video camera set up facing it, with a microphone on a boom. Now I knew why they had stopped hitting my face.

I was facing the prison governor. When he saw the state of my nose, he went ape shit with the young rupert. I was in shit state to look at anyway, so I don’t know what difference a nosebleed made. They took me next door to a sink and told me to wash off the blood. I used the blindfold as a flannel. I was then given a comb and a mirror and told to tidy up my hair. There was nothing I could do to it. It was just too matted with old blood.

It was the first time I’d seen my face since I left the FOB. I looked like Ben Gunn after somebody had taken a shovel to his face. I had a dirty, scruffy beard and the skin was flaky. My mouth was scabby. I couldn’t believe they were going to use me in a video. I cleaned myself up a bit to make them happy, but not too much: I didn’t want to look too healthy for my public.

I sat in front of the video, thinking hard about an appropriate way of showing that I was doing this against my will. I remembered that during the Vietnam War, people were going back to the States and getting persecuted purely because they’d signed something or said something to save their life or that of somebody else. People learned that they should do something that was out of the ordinary while they were exposed to the media, or do their signature with their left hand, so anyone knowing them would recognize that something was wrong.

I decided that I would try for as long as I could to keep my right index finger straight and constantly bring it up to stroke my left eye, under the pretext that my eye was hurting after walking into the lamppost.

I sat and waited. A jundie appeared with three glasses of tea and offered me one.

“We’re going to ask you some questions, Andy,” the major said. “I want you to answer them truthfully for the camera. Then, who knows, maybe you might go home soon.”

“Oh, thank you very much.”

He asked all the questions they’d asked before. Name, number, rank, date of birth, religion. Details of the helicopter and COP platoons, and what we were doing in Iraq. There was a bloke wearing dark glasses behind the camera, behind the lights, whose face I couldn’t see properly. He would talk in Arabic into the speaker system on the video, then ask the question in English. I would answer, and he would translate. I kept rubbing my eye with my finger and never looked directly to camera. I tried all the time to make myself appear drowsy and incoherent. It was worth a go. Either I’d get away with it or they’d give me a bit of a slapping. In fact they didn’t react to it at all.

“That’s it,” the major said after about twenty minutes. “You’re going back now.”

As I got up to leave, the fellow with dark glasses said, “You know your side will never win, don’t you, Andy?”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you’re far too technical.”

I was blindfolded and taken back to the prison and put into another cell on my own. I was depressed. I thought that now they’d done the film I was going to spend the rest of my time in solitary.

The guards went into the cell with the blindfold in their hands and said to Dinger, “You’re next.”

Dinger took one look at the blood on the bandage and roared: “Fucking hell!” He thought that either I had been slotted, or it was all going to happen again. Either way, if they were going to do it, they’d have to do it to him in the cell right there and then. There was what Stan later called a “bit of a scuffle” until other guards rushed in and put guns to their heads. They led him away, and Stan thought: And then it’s me.

In front of the camera Dinger was given a cigarette. When it came to smoking, Dinger was very much a man of the thumb and forefinger school, but in front of the camera he smoked elegantly with the middle fingers of his left hand, like some character out of a Noel Coward play.

Stan decided that he would stroke his hair continuously with both hands and look down at the ground. While he was being interviewed, I got moved back in with Dinger. We tried to work out why we’d done these videos. We prayed that they were going to be shown to the media, so people back home would know we were alive.

We talked to the guards as often as we could about their families.

“How many children do you have? Do you miss them? Do you see them?”

I landed up scoring with Jeral. He was really skinny and young, in his early twenties. His English was very good; he spoke as if he was apologizing, with his shoulders shrugged up.

“I’m a drummer really,” he said. “I play for a group called Queen at the Meridien Hotel in Baghdad.”

His favorite groups were Boney M and Michael Jackson, and every time he saw me he’d start singing, “He’s crazy like…”

“Oh Andy, I want to come to London,” he said to me one day. “When I come, will you show me London? I want to play in a hotel there.”

“Yeah, sure,” I shrugged, “once the war is over we can be friends. You can come to London.”

“Yes Andy, I love you.” He stared longingly into my eyes. “I love you.

Do you love me?”

“Yes, I love you too, Jeral.”

I got a fearsome slagging from the other two the moment he left.

“I’ll give you a month’s pay if you let me watch,” Dinger said.

“Give me a year’s money, and I won’t tell the squadron,” said Stan.

Jeral was a nuisance, but we did get extra bread and little tit bits of information from him. At some stage there was an initiative by the Kremlin, and Jeral said, “The war’s going to be over soon. Gorbachev’s going to organize everything.”

There was indeed some sort of peace initiative, because we heard lots of chanting in the streets and small-arms fire. Some guards burst in, and Jeral said, “The war’s over!”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Saddam Hussein has signed a treaty. He has explained to the nation that he cannot let so many of the enemy die. He is a very compassionate man.”

Our gauge of whether he was bullshitting or not was whether there was any bombing that night. In fact there was. Jeral wasn’t correct that time, but he did tell us when the ground war started.

Stan got on quite well with a sergeant major who couldn’t speak a word of English. There was some sort of affinity between the two of them, and Stan would speak to him through another of the guards. He would ask how many children he had. It turned out he had two wives and five children. Stan said: “Oh, very strong man,” and the man loved it.

We did have some slight problems with the guards. We’d get filled in now and again while we were taking the bucket down. They’d make sure you were on your own, then come and pick on you. On one occasion they made Dinger do a Michael Jackson moon dance We just let them get on with it. It was just a kicking and a few punches. You’d go down, they’d have their little laugh, and that was that.

Another time, the toilets were blocked with their shit. They marched me down there and made me pull it out with my hands. Afterwards, they made me lick my fingers clean. They thought this one was a cracker.

Stan went to the ablution block one morning with the bucket, and when it was clean, they offered to let him fill it up with water from the oil barrel. Thankingthem for their kindness, he dropped the bucket into the barrel and received a massive electric shock that threw him against the wall. We heard his screams and their hoots of hysterical laughter. The generator was running, and they’d wired up the barrel to the mains.

Baghdad was still getting attacked every night. If a bomb fell too close or somebody lost a friend or family member, the guards would come in and make sure we knew about it. They began dishing out many more serious kickings in the toilets. The three of us made a pact that if they went for it when we were together, we weren’t going to stand for it.

One night during the bombing we took a hit near the compound. From the beginning we had maintained that if ever there was a crack in the structure big enough for us to get through, we would go for it. If bombs were falling that close and you didn’t start moving, you’d probably end up being killed by your own ordnance anyway.

They took casualties that night. We could hear the screaming and shouting, the pressure waves, all the windows in the area shattering. The town of Ali Baba was really getting the good news. There was shouting by the gate to the outer courtyard, and then the sound of the gate being pushed open. We could guess what was going to happen. Sure enough the guards came in, and they gave it to Russell and David.

Then they came to our cell, two lads waving their Tiny lamps and hollering. They had their helmets and webbing on. Their weapons were slung, and they carried batons.

We stood up as they charged into the cell. They could kill us with those batons: it only takes a good twat around the head to do the business. In the films the hero gets beaten unconscious, then comes to a few minutes later and goes off to save the world; but in real life if you put your arm up to defend yourself, it will be broken. Something in our eyes must have told them that we were prepared to fight. They stopped in their tracks and stared at us. We stared them out, and they edged towards the door. They stood in the doorway, shouting and pretending to cock their weapons, but they backed off and slammed the door behind them. We couldn’t believe it. We might have laughed if we hadn’t had to listen to the moans and groans from the other lads further down.

We went through the same scenario one other time, but this time it wasn’t a bomb that sparked it off but an American. They seemed to have an irresistible urge to communicate with their fellow countrymen, even if to do so resulted in a good hiding. The Americans in our block knew now that there were others around, and that set them off.

David called out: “I’d kill for a Burger King.”

A guard who happened to be in the washroom overheard him, and minutes later the blokes tore in. But it was Russell, not David, who carried the can. His cell was nearer to the washroom, and they must have come to the wrong conclusion. He got a severe going over and was dragged off to a punishment cell. They came back and gave David a few slaps as well, and then they came to us.

There were three of them, in helmets and wielding batons. We greeted them with a look that said: “Come on, then.”

They backed off, shouting, “We’re going to split you up.” The threat was more horrifying than a beating would have been.

Miraculously, nothing happened. We could only surmise that the boys didn’t report the incident in case their lack of bottle came to light.

We became a sideshow. The guards would bring in friends and local dignitaries, and stamp about and show their authority, cocking their weapons and pointing them. One big fat bastard came in one day -with his Makharov pistol. He cocked it, brought it up, aimed it at Dinger, and pulled the trigger. The hammer came down on an empty chamber. The guards loved it. The fat bastard started laughing, all his mates started laughing, and we joined in. Then Dinger somehow managed to turn the whole thing to his advantage and ended up getting a cigarette out of it, which made his day. We continued doing our ground studies of the map every afternoon, trying to memorize every detail so that when we escaped and got out of the built-up area we’d have some form of identification of where we were. I think we got so good after a while that as soon as we saw a road sign we’d have known exactly where we were.

Map studies took up a lot of time, but in idle moments we just sat there and waffled. I went through my life story several times, until everybody knew Peckham and my three ex-wives almost as well as I did. Stan would talk about his time in Rhodesia with his family. They had donkeys and used to paint their hooves in bright colors. He told us one particularly good story about the day he’d watched as a herd of elephants came and ate all the windfall apples from an orchard. The fruit was so old that it had started to ferment, and it wasn’t long before the elephants had flaked out on their haunches, completely pissed. While they were sleeping it off, a group of monkeys appeared and ate the remaining apples. They Went up into the trees to rest after the feast, and it wasn’t long before they also were pissed. One monkey was so gone that it fell off its branch, bringing down two other monkeys with it. They landed on the head of a pissed-up elephant, which then came to and started charging around the place.

Another story had a much darker side. Stan’s family had a houseboy who lived with his family in a small bungalow on the estate. One night, a group of rebels got hold of him and shot him because he worked for the white man. They dragged the body back to the bungalow and left it on the doorstep as a warning to the rest of the family. The warning was heeded. Soon afterwards, Stan joined the army and became part of the rapid reaction force. When independence was declared, Stan left the country in despair.

We tried to educate Stan in the finer points of punk music. It took us three days to remember all the words of the Jam song “Down in the Tube Station at Midnight,” and then we tried to teach it to him. He soon gave up. “I don’t understand all this British shit,” he complained. “Don’t you guys know any Rolf Harris?”

Poor Stan. He had a thing about storing food: even if he was hungry, he would try and save it for a rainy day. He’d spend a lot of time and ingenuity hiding it from the guards, and then we’d wake up in the morning and insist that he share it. After all, what else are friends for?

We also passed the time doing exercise or assessing our injuries. I worried a lot about tooth decay. The guards nearly always spat in our food, and I imagined foul Iraqi bacteria attacking my broken stumps and rotting them, and then all my other teeth falling like dominoes.

We kept tabs on the date, and I felt especially low on the 24^th. I couldn’t help myself thinking about how I would have spent the day if I’d been in England. Would Katie have been with us for the day, or would I have just phoned her to wish her a happy birthday?

Towards the end of the month the major began turning up much more often, normally just before last light. He talked to us a lot about how wonderful it was to be an Iraqi since the revolution. There was a comprehensive health-care system, he explained, and everybody got a handsome pension at retirement age. Saddam also provided free education for all, up to and including university level-even if that entailed studying overseas.

“Our children read Shakespeare at school,” he said one time, showing us a copy of Hamlet. “Last night I was going home, and a bomb dropped behind me. To be or not to be-it is Allah’s will, no?”

None of us said anything, and after a while he muttered, “You know, you have been well treated here.”

It was our best clue yet that the war was nearly over. We didn’t tell him what his guards were up to when his back was turned. That would only have made matters worse.

“Just remember that what happened before is nothing to do with me’ he repeated. It must have been obvious to him that the war was going against them, and he was covering his arse.

One night we heard the gates opening and the sound of moaning and groaning. I hated hearing the gate open at night: it made me feel very insecure. It was clear from the sounds that a prisoner was being brought in and put into a cell. There was lots of mumbling, and suddenly a long, loud burst of screaming. We made contact with him the following night. His name was Joseph Small, call sign Alley Cat. He was a major, an aviator in the US Marine Corps. Poor bastard, he had been shot down on what he was able to tell us was the last day of the ground war. He had a bad parachute landing that left him hanging in a tree. He had sustained an open fracture of the leg, and all the Iraqis had done was give him an open-cast splint and let him get on with it.

It was wonderful to hear the news. The ground war had not only started but nearly finished, and Iraq was on its arse. But the problem Joseph Small brought with him was that the more Americans there were, the more chat there was. They wouldn’t listen to make sure there weren’t any guards around: they would just spark up, and the fallout was bad for all of us. I was still concerned that we could find ourselves separated.

Joseph was quite amusing because he was gagging for a cigarette and he was always asking for them, but he always asked aggressively and they just fucked him off. But Dinger, the model diplomat, every time the major turned up now he’d get a fag out of him.

In the end we decided not to initiate any more conversations with the Americans. We let them start their own, and waited to see if there was a reaction from the guards. If there wasn’t, we’d join in, always trying to get as much information as we could. Had anybody been reported to the Red Cross? we asked. Did they think that we were dead? Did they know we were alive?

Joseph Small was able to say that nothing about us had been reported to the Red Cross; we’d all been posted as missing in action. Bush had just announced that if all prisoners were not released, the Allies were going all the way to Baghdad. That made us feel good in one respect: at least we were winning, and there was a good chance that we’d be released. But there was also a chance we wouldn’t be freed. We knew the Iraqis had contact with the PLO. Were we going to land up best mates with Terry Waite, cuddling the same radiator?

There was a funny side to it as well, though.

“Who’s that?” a voice boomed out.

“Major Joseph Small, Marine Corps.”

“Russell Sanborn, Captain, Marine Corps.”

“Aviator?”

“Yes, sir!”

It was real good gung ho stuff, straight out of Top Gun.

The day after Joseph Small turned up, a medic sergeant called Troy Dunlap was brought in on a stretcher with spinal injuries. He had been with a woman doctor who had broken both her arms and was also taken prisoner. The rest of the Black Hawk crew were dead after being shot down. Inevitably, the Americans made contact with him straightaway.

“Major Small? Major Joseph Small? Shit, sir, I’m your search and rescue mission!”

We made sure he knew our names as well, in case he got repatriated early because of his injuries.

Around this time the bombing stopped, which confirmed Small’s story. We were using the bombing as a barometer. If it started again, we would know that things had gone to rat shit. In the afternoon two bangs sounded off in quick succession. After the first the birds flew away very loudly, and there was lots of shouting. Our hopes of an early release faded with the echo of the boom.

I tried to think positively. The Iraqis were getting their arse kicked by ground troops as well now. Small’s information indicated it would be a matter of days rather than weeks until the end. And things must be going well for there to be daylight raids. But I hadn’t heard any antiaircraft fire. Jeral confirmed that it had been aircraft going supersonic over the city-theirs or ours he didn’t know.

Early in the morning of March 3, the outer gate of the courtyard opened up and then the gate into the main prison. There was lots of noise of keys clanking, voices raised, and shouting. David’s cell was opened. We were all straining to hear what was going on.

We heard the words: “You’re going home.”

We looked at one another, and Stan said, “Fuck, mate, this is good shit.”

Our door burst open, and a guard stood in the doorway with a clipboard in his hand. “Stan. Dinger. You are now going home. Wait here.”

No Andy. It was one of the worst moments of my life. Our worst fears had been confirmed. They were going to keep back hostages.

I turned to Dinger and said, “If you’re going home, make sure you speak to Jilly.”

Dinger and Stan shook my hand before leaving. “Don’t worry,” they said.

Don’t worry? I was flapping fit to take off.

Left alone in the cell, I spent the first couple of hours feeling severely sorry for myself. I felt happy for the blokes that were going, but that didn’t stop me from feeling abandoned. After so many weeks of comradeship, the sudden loneliness was almost a physical pain. I forced myself to work through the options. The war must have ended; there was no doubt about that. We knew that Small’s sortie was just about the last to be flown, and that was days ago. So why had only three of us been released? Were they being released?

In the afternoon the major came in with all his entourage. “Yes, it is true,” he said. “Your two friends have gone home. They will be home with their families very soon. Maybe you will be going soon. Maybe one day, maybe two days. I don’t know. But remember, what happened at the other place is nothing to do with me. What happened here is my responsibility. You’ve been well looked after.”

I was nodding and agreeing like a lunatic. He gave me two oranges, which I ate as soon as he had gone, peel and all. I began to feel better.

Later that afternoon I was dragged out and put into the courtyard in the sunlight. I sat there soaking up the rays for five minutes and was joined by two guards who started talking about the pop charts. They were about two decades behind in their news, but I wasn’t going to tell them that. Instead I discussed the merits of various Boney M and Abba hits, nodding and agreeing as much as I could without my head falling off. Everybody was being all rather nice, so I knew something was afoot.

I got the sun on my bones for an hour, and it felt -wonderful. They took me back in when the sun went down, but I was feeling more and more hopeful.

Something strange happened to Joseph Small that night. I was lying on the floor of my cell when I heard his door open and people go in. There were mumblings; then about a minute later the door closed, and the noises receded. At last light the guards left us alone. The three of us got talking, and I asked him what had happened.

“An Iraqi soldier came into my cell,” he said. “He was in combat dress and in bad shape. He had a rough beard, he had his webbing on, helmet, his boots were in shreds from rock cuts. He came in, looked at me, saluted, and left. Weird, Andy, fuckin’ weird.”

We could only surmise that he had withdrawn from Kuwait and for some odd reason wanted to see a prisoner.

We spent the next half hour trying to work out why two lots had gone but not us, but didn’t get far. For the second night I didn’t get any sleep. The first time it had been because I was so down in the dumps. Tonight it was the excitement of what the morning might bring.

In the early hours of March 5 the gates opened, and I jumped to my feet, eager with anticipation.

Russell’s door opened.

“Russell Sanborn? You’re going home.”

Then Joseph’s door.

“Joseph Small? You’re going home.”

The next one was the stretcher case.

And the last one was me.

“Andy McNab? McNab? Yes, you will be going home soon.”

They handcuffed us and took us out of the cells one by one. We went through the gates that led onto the courtyard, and then through those gates, and were put onto a bus. For the very first time I saw the bodies that belonged to the voices from other cells. Joseph Small was much older than I had imagined, a man in his mid-forties who looked good considering his injuries. All I had ever seen of Russell Sanborn was an eye and finger that pulled down a small flap of blanket so he could look out and see people slop out as we walked past his punishment cell. There was no light in his cell apart from this hole. He had a deep, booming voice, full of authority, and I had expected a man mountain. In fact he had a very slight frame.

They moved down the bus and blindfolded everybody. We drove along the road for another 75 feet and stopped. We seemed to be picking up another batch of prisoners, who sounded like Saudis. I guessed we’d been staying in a mirror image jail that had two identical wings.

We drove for about forty minutes. We stopped and I heard aero engines. This is great, I thought: We’re just going to get on the plane and fuck off. But only the Saudis disembarked. The guards then started to call out our names.

I went forward when called, still blindfolded, and was taken into a building. The echoes indicated it was a low structure; I imagined it was a hangar. We were arranged in a long line, handcuffed and blindfolded. There was a loud hiss of Tiny lamps, and the noise of soldiers moving around. I could hear the breathing of people either side of me. We were held there for a long time. My stomach was playing up again, and I was feeling weak. I leaned forward, and my nose brushed against a brick wall.

A sudden flurry of commands brought me bolt upright. I heard the ominous, metallic echo of weapons being cocked.

Well, there you go, I said to myself. So much for getting released: we’re going to get topped. I took a deep breath and waited for it.

Nothing happened. We stood there for five minutes in total silence, everybody holding their breath.

I was feeling more and more ill as we stood against the wall, and finally I buckled, collapsing on to my knees.

“I’ve got to go to the toilet,” I called out.

Somebody grabbed my arm and propelled me away, but by the time we got there I’d sprayed myself with runny stuff. I was taken back and put in the queue.

They took us one by one into tiny cells. The handcuffs were removed, and I could touch either side with my hands. But there were three blankets, a real luxury, and a little window. I needed to bang on the door every five minutes during the night. A guard appeared each time and dragged me down to the toilet, then stood over me while I dropped my arse. We spent the whole night toing and froing.

At first light we were given a good breakfast of egg, jam and bread, and hot, black tea. It was rather encouraging. I looked out of my cell and saw piles of old uniforms arranged on the floor, and yellow prison POW pajamas with pumps. I thought, this is the ticket.

An hour after breakfast, my cell door was opened, and I was led along a corridor to a room where there was a chair, table, mirror, water, and a razor.

The “barber” started to shave me, so clumsily that he ripped small chunks out of my face. Blood trickled down my chin.

“Can I do it myself?” I asked.

“No, you are a dangerous man.” They wouldn’t let me rinse my face afterwards, either. I just had to wipe the soap and blood off with my shirt.

I was taken back to the cell by two soldiers who told me to strip. They presented me with one of the yellow uniforms and took my clothes away. I said a sad, silent farewell to my escape map and compass.

“Name?”

“McNab.”

“You’ll be going home today. Very soon.” The blindfold was put back on.

The cells were opened one at a time. A soldier checked our names, removed the blindfolds, and we came out and got in line. Somebody came up to the left of me and grabbed my hand enthusiastically. “My name’s John Nichol,” he beamed.

I shook his hand. He noticed me looking at the green R.A.F polo neck under his yellow top.

“Fifteen Squadron,” he said. “Tornadoes.”

He was a really happy bloke, but not as delirious as the Americans. They were behaving as if they were already back in the States, and a few of the guards were getting twitchy about it. I was still keeping myself in check. The light was at the end of the tunnel, but who was to say it wasn’t just another guard with a Tiny lamp coming towards us?

We were blindfolded yet again and marched off in a big crocodile. After a few meters they stopped us again, and a soldier walked up and down the line spraying us with women’s perfume. I gritted my teeth. I could live with the smell, but the alcohol stung my badly shaved face.

We boarded a bus and after half an hour or so were told that we could take our blindfolds off. The bus had curtains, but I managed to look out through a gap and saw bombed bridges and buildings. Daily life was still very much going on, however. It was quite a happy time on the coach. The pilots were saying “Hi” to each other, and the guard at the front just sat there and let them get on with it.

It could be the world’s biggest bluff, however, and I decided to keep myself to myself.

We pulled up at the door of the Nova Hotel. The place was teeming with soldiers and camera crews, and there was a fleet of Red Cross vehicles. I began to feel slightly more at ease.

The main foyer was crowded with what I at first thought were Iraqis, but who turned out to be Algerian medical staff. Part of the trade-off between Saddam and the Red Cross had been that they provide medical staff for Baghdad. The Algerians lived in the hotel and helped in the local hospitals.

We were taken into one of the reception rooms and segregated by nationality for documentation. The hotel had no heating, no hot water, no lifts. There was lighting, but the Red Cross had brought everything else with them, including their own food.

This was the first time that the Red Cross had had any news about any of us from the Iraqis. Even then, the lists being handed over were corrupt. It was a breach of the Geneva Convention, but a rather minor one compared with the rest of our experiences as POWs.

I was keen to find out about Dinger and Stan.

“Have there been prisoners released before us?” I asked one of the women.

The Red Cross personnel appeared to range from women in their mid-twenties to men in their late fifties. They were incredibly brave and professional people. I wouldn’t have done their job.

“Yes. They got out via Jordan.”

“Is there any chance you can give me the names of the Brits?”

She checked a list for me and found the surnames of Dinger and Stan.

There were no other names that I recognized.

The girl confirmed that we were the last batch. So we had been the only three all along, I thought. All the stuff about wounded signals operators was a load of bollocks-a good bluff that had got me to gob off. Legs had probably been dead from the time Dinger left him.

Once the administration was done, we were given a little Red Cross ticket and a number, and the Europeans were taken upstairs to the third floor. I noticed that the fire escapes were boarded up, leaving only one way in and out through the central staircase.

Everything we needed was on the third floor. A Red Cross waiter brought us anything we asked for-if he had it. We got boiled eggs that weren’t boiled properly. When we opened them they ran, but they were the best eggs I’d had in my life. The others followed theirs with croissants and chocolate, but by that time I was in the toilet, bulking up. I started again with an empty stomach and settled for a bottle of beer and some bread. We sat around talking, and I listened to everybody saying, “Well, that’s it, we’re away.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After all that we’d been through, people were taking the Iraqis at their word.

It seemed the intention that we were going to be held in the hotel for a couple of hours and then taken away to an airfield. One of the Red Cross blokes asked if anybody was cold.

“Fucking right,” came the reply.

Two hours later he came back with a jumper for each of us that somebody had gone and bought downtown. The patterns were weird and wonderful, but they were warm.

The main man of the Red Cross appeared and said, “Is there an Andy McNab here?”

“Yes.”

“Somebody downstairs wants to see you.”

As he led me down the staircase I said, “We fly out this afternoon?”

“We don’t know yet because of the weather. We could also be delayed because we can’t get the aircraft back from Saudi. It’s very difficult to get communications-the Iraqis won’t let me set up my own satellite com ms It’s all third-hand information, so I’m just sitting here and waiting. It’s a terrible setup: they won’t give me any help at all. We brought all these Algerian medical teams to help them with the civilian victims of the bombing, but they’ve moved the civvies out of the hospitals in Baghdad and told them to go home, to leave hospital beds for soldiers who are coming home from the front. There’s so much unrest they have to give priority to the soldiers.

“That’s why you are on the third floor. We put the Algerians at the bottom because they are in no danger.

We have the Red Cross personnel next, and then you right at the top, because they are after you. They want some of you for hostages and bargaining power. If you come down these stairs, you must only come down with me or another Red Cross member.

“We can’t get the badly wounded up to the third floor because the lifts do not work and we can’t maneuver them around the staircases. Unfortunately they’ve got to stay downstairs. It’s quite possible that they’ll raid the place and take people. The only defense we have is our Red Cross status.”

We went into the main foyer, and I spotted two sinister-looking Arabs sitting by the reception desk.

“Secret police,” he warned.

If they hadn’t posed such a threat, they would have looked laughable in their big, baggy suits with turnups, white socks, and swept-back hair.

“Believe it or not,” the official went on, “the soldiers out there are protecting you.”

It was ironic. I saw the soldiers stop two other men in suits from coming in. You could tell by the body language that there was obviously some friction between them. Rumors were already circulating that fifty generals had been executed after a failed attempt to change the system of power.

We walked through the foyer.

“When you go into this room,” the official pointed, “you must stay there. If you want to move outside, one of us must be with you.”

A Red Cross girl was sitting in a chair, blocking the door. She was quietly reading a book, and on the floor by her side she had a small bottle of wine, a bit of bread, and some cheese. Brave, unbelievably brave.

Four or five people were on stretchers. I recognized Joseph Small and Troy Dunlap and waved. Then, looking along the line, I saw Mark.

“I gave them everybody’s name to see if any of you were here,” he grinned.

I wanted to hug him and say “Great to see you,” but the words wouldn’t come out. I shook his hand instead.

“What happened to you?” I said, hardly containing my amazement.

He was wearing a dish-dash. His body looked wasted, and he still bore the bruises and scars of severe beatings.

“When we had that last contact and we both went down, I went left and got caught up in fire. There were people all over the place. I ended up lying in a small drainage ditch. They were following up and were a foot away from me at one stage. Then I moved off a bit, trying to edge my way out of it. After about half an hour I saw some torches, and as they were fanning about, they caught me in the beam. There was a big cabby, and I got shot through the foot and across the elbow. Look.”

He lifted the dish-dash. The round had skimmed all the way around his elbow. He was incredibly lucky. A 7.62 round could have taken his arm off.

“The foot wound fucked me up,” he said. “I couldn’t move. They gave me a good kicking, dragged me onto a truck, and took me to a location. It was fucking hideous. My foot was just bouncing up and down on the wagon floor because I had no control of it, and I was screaming my head off. They thought it was hilarious. They were laughing their bollocks off.”

Mark lost a lot of blood and thought he was going to die. He received no medical attention for his foot; the gaping wound was just bandaged and left to heal by itself. He was handcuffed naked to a bed all the time he was in prison, and basically left to rot. He went through the same system of interrogation as the rest of us, the only difference in his case being that the interrogation took place in his room.

“They’d dig at my foot,” he said, “and shake my leg so my foot rattled around. It was grim. But one funny thing was, they’d piled my clothes on the floor by my bed. Every day I looked down at the gold, wrapped up in the masking tape, and the fuckers never found it until halfway through my capture. I still had my escape map and compass and all.”

He had two blokes that used to come in and take him out for a shit. He called them Health and Hygiene because they were such dirty, minging old things. When he was on his own, he used to get the pitcher of water and try to clean his wound. The actual hole was clogged up with human skin and gunge, trying to heal itself over. His foot was swollen to the size of a marrow.

“Sometimes I’d call out that I needed a shit, and they’d come in and put a bowl under my arse and leave me for hours. Piss was going everywhere because I can’t organize myself, and there was shit up to the brim of this little bowl.”

He got filled in by the guards quite a few times. The blokes would come in and play with his foot and generally give him a hard time. All along, he kept up the same old story as the rest of us. During one interrogation, somebody recognized his New Zealand accent. He was accused of being a mercenary, working for the Israelis.

I told him that Dinger and Stan were away and should be in the UK soon, and gave him our theories of what we thought had happened to the others. As we talked about events, he reckoned he could have been in the same prison as us: it certainly took direct hits at exactly the same time.

The Red Cross were knocking out sheds of coffee for us, and then a cooked dinner turned up.

Mark had lice, like we all did, and generally stank. But his stink was something special, and he was worried that it could mean gangrene. We talked about the possible scenarios that could happen now, but kept drifting back to swapping horror stories, each of us trying to cap the other.

I was just telling Mark about the situation outside with the secret police when one of the Red Cross guys came around and said that there was a delay. We couldn’t go until the next day because of the aircraft: it had gone to Saudi to pick up prisoners for an exchange, but because of adverse weather it wouldn’t be coming back until the following morning.

The Red Cross people were tense. They posted sentries in the corridors and at all the entry points, and armed them with candles and food. It was obvious that they were expecting this to be a rough night.

Mark and I had a beer and then turned in. I planned to kip on the floor next to his stretcher in case of trouble. That was the plan but it didn’t happen. I went back upstairs to get some food and chocolate and fell asleep in a chair. Red Cross people, awake all night, sat among us in groups of two and three.

I woke up early. An official appeared and announced with a grin that it was time to go home. Mark and I had a problem now of security, because men from the Regiment are required to keep their faces out of the press at all costs. I went up and saw the pilots, and explained my concerns to the Red Cross.

“No problem,” they said. “At the same time as the coach comes to the front of the hotel, ambulances will be going to the back because we can only get the stretchers out through the service area. You can go in one of the ambulances with your friend.”

The aircrew agreed to put on a diversionary show for the media, pulling their jumpers over their heads to get the cameras clicking. Footage of these camera shy “Special Forces” lads was broadcast all over the world.

We moved off in a convoy. We had two Red Cross guys in the front of our ambulance, and as we drove along, one of them said, “We’ll give you a tour of Baghdad, if you like. If you look to your left,” he said, adopting the voice of the typical tour guide, “this is the Ministry of Information. It was a whole system of buildings, and just one building was dropped. Talk about precision bombing. And on your right you have the Ministry of…”

Posters of Saddam and the symbol of the Muslim crescent were on every street. There was devastation everywhere, but by the looks of things the precision bombing had indeed been excellent. Without a doubt they’d been hitting their military targets. Civilian buildings right next door to the ruins were relatively II unscathed.

He started talking about the Iran-Iraq prisoner exchanges that he’d been involved in. He said they’d been exchanging prisoners in their twenties who looked over forty, they’d had such a terrible time of it. Their life was gone. Some of the injuries were horrific, open wounds that had been left to fester.

“This is actually the most successful exchange yet,” the bloke said. “I think that’s because of pressure from the military, who probably want their manpower back. There is a lot of concern about stability. A coup seems imminent. The sooner we get you out the better.”

“I’ll second that one,” Mark said.

I read the road signs towards Baghdad International, and as the kilometers ticked down, I felt my apprehension building. There seemed to be a lot of administrative cock-ups because we’d drive a little way, then stop, then drive on, then stop. I couldn’t see any aircraft.

“We have this all the time,” the driver said. “The bureaucracy is mind-boggling.”

We rounded a corner and saw a convoy of buses full of Iraqi prisoners. They didn’t look very happy with themselves. The main terminal was deserted. We sat through two hours of petty administration before the call finally came for us to be put onto an aircraft.

The walking prisoners went up the steps at the front of the two Swissair 727s. The stretcher cases were maneuvered up the stairwell at the rear. I stayed with Mark. The Swissair crew greeted us like VIPs, and straightaway the coffee came out-with cream. It was nectar.

As the aircraft lifted from the runway, we roared like a football crowd.

I looked at Mark and grinned. This time we really were going home.