Bravo Two Zero

4

I couldn’t sleep because my mind was going at a hundred miles an hour. It was people’s lives I was playing with here, my own included. The squadron OC had given the plan his approval, but that didn’t stop me wondering if there was a better way of going about it. Were other people just nodding and agreeing with what I said? Probably not, since they all had a vested interest in our success and they were outspoken individuals. Was there anything I’d left out or forgotten? But you reach the point where you have to press on regardless. You could spend the rest of your life thinking about the different options.

I got up and made a brew. Legs had just finished sorting out the signals kit, and he came over and joined me. There was no sign of Stan or Dinger. Those two could sleep on a chicken’s lip.

“The signals Head Shed have just given me our call sign,” Legs said.

“It’s Bravo Two Zero. Sounds good to me.”

We had a bit of a chat about possible shortages. As I watched him head back to his bed, I wondered if he was thinking about home. He was a strong family man, with a second child that was just five months old. My mind drifted to Jilly. I hoped she wasn’t getting upset by anything she was reading in the media.

There was the constant noise of kit being lugged and blokes mooching around sorting themselves out. I put my Walkman on and listened to Madness. I wasn’t really listening because my mind was screaming in so many directions, but I must have nodded off at about three, because at six, when I woke, the lead singer had dropped two octaves and they were just about grinding to a halt.

It was quite a frenzy that morning. We checked that we still knew how to activate the distress signals on the small TACBE radios and use them one-to-one so we could actually talk line of sight on them.

Vince had collected the 5.56 ammunition for the Armalites and as many 40mm bombs for the grenade launchers as he could get his hands on. We had a lot of shortages on these bombs because the grenade launcher is such a formidable, excellent weapon. The bombs are quite a commodity; when you’ve got them, you hoard them. I explained the problem to a mate in A Squadron, and he poached about and got us some more.

All the 5.56 had to be put into magazines, and the magazines checked to make sure they were working. The magazines are as important as the weapon itself, because if the springs don’t push the round into position, the working parts can’t push the round into the breech. So you check and recheck all your mags, and then recheck them a third time. The Armalite magazine normally takes 30 rounds, but many of us choose to put in just 29, which gives a little bit of extra push in the spring. It’s easier and quicker to put on a new mag than to clear a stoppage.

We checked the 203 bombs and explosives. PE4 doesn’t smell and feels very much like plasticine. It’s surprisingly inert. You can even light a stick of it and watch it burn like a frenzied candle. The only trouble with PE4 is that when it’s cold, it’s quite brittle and hard to mold into shapes. You have to make it pliable by working it in your hands.

We checked and rechecked all the detonators. The nonelectric ones that we’d be using for the compromise device are initiated by the safety fuse burning into them, and cannot be tested. Electric dets can be put on a circuit tester. If the electric circuit is going through the det, we can be sure that the electric pulse will set off the explosive inside and, in turn, detonate the charge. Fortunately, misfires are very rare.

It takes quite a while to test the timers. You have to set the time delay and check that it’s working. If it works for one hour, it will work for forty-eight hours. Then you time the device and see if it is working correctly. In theory, if it is more than five seconds early or late, you exchange it for another. In practice, I bin any timer that I have doubts about.

The last item for testing was the wiring for the claymore antipersonnel mines, which was also done on a circuit tester.

We then ran through the rigging and de rigging of the little Elsie antipersonnel mines. For many of us it had been a while since we’d had our hands on this sort of kit. We made sure we could remember how to arm them and, more importantly, how to disarm them. There might be a situation where we’d lay the explosive and Elsie mines on target, but for some reason have to go in and extract them. This makes life more difficult when you’re placing them, because not only do you have to keep a record of where they are on the ground, but also the person who sets the anti handling device should be the one to lift it.

There was a severe shortage of claymores, which was a problem because they are excellent for defense and. The solution was to go round to the cook house get a pile of ice-cream containers, and make our own. You make a hole in the center of the carton, run a det cord tail into it, and tie a knot inside the container. You make a shaped charge with PE4 and put it in the bottom of the tub, making sure that the knot is embedded. You then fill the carton with nuts and bolts, little lumps of metal, and anything else nasty you can find lying around, put on the lid, and wrap lots of masking tape around to seal it. Once the claymore is in position, all you have to do is put a det onto the det cord and Bob used to be your uncle.

Next, we sorted out the weapons, starring with a trip down to the range to “zero” the sights. You lie down in the prone position, aim at the same place on a target 300 feet away, and fire five rounds. This is then called a group. You look where the group has landed on the target and then adjust the sights so that the next group will land where you want it to-which is where you are aiming. If you do not zero and the group is, say, 4 inches to the right of where you are aiming at 300 feet, then at 600 feet it will be 8 inches to the right, and so on. At 1200 feet you could easily miss a target altogether.

One individual’s zero will be different from another’s because of many factors. Some are physical size and “eye relief”-the distance between the eye of the firer and the rear sight. If you used another person’s weapon the zero could be off for you. This is not a problem at short ranges of up to 900 feet, but at greater distances it could be a problem. If this was the case and you could see where the rounds were going, you could “aim off” to adjust.

We spent a whole morning down at the range-first to zero the weapons, and second to test all the magazines. I was going to take ten magazines with me on the patrol, a total of 290 rounds, and every magazine had to be tested. I would also be carrying a box of 200 rounds for a Minimi, which takes the same round as the Armalite and can be either belt- or magazine-fed.

We also fired some practice 203 bombs, which throw out a chalk puff when they land to help you see if you’ve got to aim higher or lower-it’s a crude form of zero.

We rehearsed for many different scenarios. The situation on the ground can change very rapidly, and you have to expect everything to be rather fluid. The more you practice, the more flexible you can be. We call this stage of planning and preparation “walk through, talk through,” and operate a Chinese parliament while we’re doing it. Everybody, regardless of rank, has the right to contribute his own ideas and rip to shreds those of others.

We practiced various kinds of LUP because we weren’t sure of the lie of the ground. The terrain might be as flat as a pancake, in which case we’d LUP in two groups of four that gave each other mutual support. We discussed the way we would communicate between the two groups-whether it would be by com ms cord, which is simply a stretch of string that can be pulled in the event of a major drama, or by field telephone, a small handset attached to a piece of two flex D10 wire running along to the next position. In case we decided to go ahead with the landline, we practiced running the D10 out and how we were actually going to speak. Legs went off and came back with a pair of electronic field telephones that even he wasn’t familiar with. They had been running from one office to another between Portakabins before he nicked them. We sat with them like children with a new Fisher-Price toy, pressing this, pushing that. “What’s this do then? What if I push this?”

The priority when filling a bergen is “equipment to task”-in our case, ordnance and equipment that could help us to place or deliver that ordnance. Next came the essentials to enable you to survive-water and food, trauma-management equipment, and, for this op, NBC protection.

The equipment in our berg ens was what we would need on the ground to operate. However, radio batteries run down and, along with many other things, would have to be replaced during our two weeks of being self-sufficient. Therefore more equipment had to be taken along and cached, simply to resupply the berg ens This was what was in the jerricans and two sandbags, one containing more NEC kit, the other more food plus any batteries and odds and sods.

It added up to an awesome weight of kit. Vince was in charge of distribution. Different types of equipment have to be evenly placed in the patrol. If all the explosives were placed in one bergen and that was lost, for whatever reason, we would then lose our attack capability using explosives. In the Falklands, the task force’s entire supply of Mars bars was sent on one ship, and everybody was flapping in case it sank. They should have got Vince to organize it. Besides the tactical considerations behind equal distribution, people want and expect equal loads, whether they’re 5’2” or 6’3”. We have a scale that weighs up to 200 Lb, and it showed that we were carrying 154 Lb per man in our berg ens and belt kit. On top of that we had a 5gallon jerrican of water each-another 40 Lb. We carried our NEC kit and cache rations, which weighed yet another 15 Lb, in two sandbags that had been tied together to form saddlebags that could go around our necks or over our shoulders. The total weight per man was therefore 209 Lb, the weight of a 15-stone man. Everybody packed their equipment the way they wanted. There’s no set way of doing this, as long as you’ve got it and can use it. The only “must” was the patrol radio, which always goes on top of the signaler’s bergen so that it can be retrieved by anybody in a contact.

Belt kit consists of ammunition and basic survival requisites-water, food, and trauma-care equipment, plus personal goodies. For this op we would also take TACBEs in our belt kit, plus cam netting to provide cover if we couldn’t find any natural, and digging tools to unearth the cables if necessary. Your belt kit should never come off you, but if it does it must never be more than an arm’s length away. At night you must always have physical contact with it. If it’s off, you sleep on top of it. The same goes for your weapon.

The best method of moving the equipment proved to be a shuttle service in two groups of four, with four giving the protection, four doing the humping, and then changing around. It was hard work, and I didn’t look forward to the 12 mile tab that first night-or maybe two-from the heli drop-off to the MSR. We certainly wouldn’t practice carrying it now: that would be a bit like practicing being wet, cold, and hungry, which wouldn’t achieve anything.

We did practice getting off the aircraft, and the actions we would carry out if there was a compromise as it was happening or the heli was leaving.

Everything now was task-oriented. If you weren’t physically doing something to prepare for it, you were thinking about it. As we “walked through, talked through,” I could see the concentration etched on everybody’s face.

We were getting centrally fed, and the cooks were sweating their butts off for us. Most of the Regiment had already disappeared on tasks, but there were enough blokes left to pack the cook house and slag each other off. The boys in A Squadron had given themselves the most outrageous crew cuts right down to the bone. They had suntanned faces in front and sparkly white domes behind. Some of them were the real Mr. Guccis, the lounge lizards downtown of a Friday, and there they were with the world’s worst haircuts, no doubt desperately praying the war was going to last long enough for it to grow again.

Because a lot of Regiment administration was also being run centrally, I kept bumping into people that I hadn’t seen for a long time. You’d give them a good slagging, see what reading material they had, then nick it. It was a really nice time. People were more sociable than usual, probably because we were out of the way, there were no distractions, just the job at hand. Everybody was euphoric. Not since the Second World War and the days of David Stirling had there been so much of the Regiment together at any one time in one theater.

We had some very nasty injections at one stage against one of the biological warfare agents it was thought Saddam Hussein might use. The theory was that you got one injection, then waited a couple of days and went back for another, but the majority of us were out of the game after the first jab. It was horrendous: our arms came up like balloons, so we didn’t go back.

We were told on the 18^th that we were going to move forward to another location, an airfield, from where we would mount our operations. We sorted out our personal kit so that if it had to be sent to our next of kin anything upsetting or pornographic had been removed. This would be done by the blokes in the squadron as well, to make sure your rubber fetish was never made public. To make less drama for your family you usually put military kit in one bag and personal effects in another. We labeled it and handed it in to the squadron quartermaster sergeant.

We flew out from the operating base on a C130 that was packed with pinkies and mountains of kit. It was tactical, low-level flying, even though we were still in Saudi airspace. There was too much noise for talking. I put on a pair of ear defenders and got my head down. It was pitch-dark when we landed at the large Coalition airbase and started to unload the kit. Noise was constant and earsplitting. Aircraft of all types took off and landed on the brightly lit runway-everything from spotter aircraft to A10 Thunderbolts.

We were much closer to the Iraqi border here, and I noticed that it was much chillier than we had been used to. You definitely needed a jumper or smock to keep yourself warm, even with the work of unloading. We laid out our sleeping bags on the grass under the palm trees and got a brew going from our belt kit. I was lying on my back looking up at the stars when I heard a noise that started as low, distant thunder and then grew until it filled the sky. Wave after wave of what looked like B52s were passing overhead enroute to Iraq. Everywhere you looked there were bombers. It could have been a scene from a Second World War recruitment poster. Tankers brought out their lines and jets moved in to fill up. The sky roared for five or six minutes. Such mighty, heart-stirring air power dominating the heavens-and down below on the grass, a bunch of dickheads brewing up. We had been self contained and self-obsessed, seeing nothing of the war but our own preparations. Now it hit home: the Gulf War was not just a small number of men on a task; this was something fucking outrageously major. And bar one more refuel, we were within striking distance of adding to the mayhem.

Just before first light Klaxons started wailing, and people ran in all directions. None of us had a clue what was going on, and we stayed put in our sleeping bags.

“Get in the shelter!” somebody yelled, but it was too warm where we were. Nobody budged, and quite rightly so. If somebody wanted us to know what was going on, they’d come and tell us. Eventually somebody shouted, “Scud!” and we jumped. We’d just about got to our feet when the order came to stand down.

Every hour on the hour during the day, somebody would tune in to the BBC World Service. At certain times you’d hear the signature tune of the Archers as well. When you’re away there’s always somebody who’s listening to the everyday tale of country folk, even if they will not admit it.

We were told we were going in that night. It was quite a relief. We’d got to the airfield with only what we stood up in.

In the afternoon I gave a formal set of orders. Everybody who was involved in the task was present-all members of the patrol; the squadron OC; the OPS officer who oversees all the squadron’s operations.

After I had delivered them verbally, the orders would be handed over to the operations center. They would stay there until the mission was completed, so that if anything went wrong, everybody would know what I wanted to happen. If we ought to have been at point A by day 4, for example, and we weren’t, they’d know that I wanted a fast jet flying over so I could make contact by TACBE.

The top of each orders sheet is overprinted with the words Remember Need to Know to remind you of OP SEC It’s critically important that nobody should know anything that does not concern him directly. The pilots, for example, would not attend the orders.

I started by describing the ground we were going to cover. You have to explain your orders as if nobody’s got a clue what’s going on-so in this case I started by pointing out where Iraq was and which countries bordered it. Then you go into the area in detail, which for us was the bend in the MSR. I described the lie of the ground and the little topographical information I had. Everything that I knew, they had to know.

Next I gave times of first and last light, the moon states, and the weather forecast. I had been confidently informed by the met blokes that the weather should be cool and dry. Weather information is important because if, for example, you have been briefed in the orders that the prevailing wind is from the northeast, you can use that information to help you with your navigation. Since the weather was still forecast as fairly clement for the duration of our mission, we had again elected to leave our sleeping bags behind. Not that there would have been any room to take them anyway.

I now gave the Situation phase of the orders. I would normally tell at this point everything I knew about the enemy that concerned us-weapons, morale, composition, and strengths, and so on-but the intelligence was very scanty. I would also normally mention the location of any friendly forces and how they could help us, but for our op there was nothing to tell.

Next was the mission statement, which I repeated twice. It was just as the OC had given it to us in the briefing room: one, to locate and destroy the landline in the area of the northern MSR, and two, to find and destroy Scud.

Now came Execution, the real meat of the orders-how we were actually going to carry out the mission. I gave a general outline, broken down into phases, a bit like telling a story.

“Phase 1 will be the infiltration, which will be by the Chinook. Phase 2 will be moving up to the LUP-cum cache area. Phase 3 will be LUP routine. Phase 4 will be the recce, then target attack on the landline.

Phase 5 will be the actions on Scud location. Phase 6 will be the exfiltration, or resupply and re tasking

Then, for each phase, I would go into the detail of how we were going to do it. This has to be as detailed as possible to eliminate gray areas. After every phase I then gave the “actions on”-for instance, actions on compromise during the drop-off, if the patrol came under fire just as the heli.took off again. Then people would know what I wanted to happen when there was no drama, and they’d also know what needed to happen if there was.

That was all very fine in theory, of course, but for each of these actions on, you also need to describe every detail of how you want things to be done. All of this had to be talked about and worked out beforehand and then given in the formal orders. Forward planning saves time and energy on the ground because people then know what is required of them. For example, what happens if the heli is required to return to the patrol at some stage to replace a damaged radio? When the heli lands do we go around to the back of the aircraft? Do we take the new radio out of the load master side door? How do we actually call the heli in? What is the authentication code? The answer to this one was that we’d give a phonetic code, the letter Bravo, as recognition. The heli pilot would know that at a certain grid, or in a certain area within that grid, he was going to see us flashing Bravo on infrared. He’d be looking through his PNG (passive night goggles), and because I’d told him so, he’d know he would land 15 feet to the left-hand side of the B when he saw it. Then, because he was landing on my right hand side, all I’d have to do was walk past the cockpit to the load master door, which is behind the cockpit on the left-hand side on the Chinook, throw a radio in, and catch the radio that they threw out. If there were any messages they’d grab my arm and give them to me on a bit of paper. The exchange would be all over in a minute.

It took about an hour and a half to go through all the details of each phase. Next were coordinating instructions, the nitty-gritty details like timings, grid references, RVs, locations of interest. These had already been given but would be said again to confirm. This stage also included actions on capture, and details of the E amp;E plan.

I covered service support, which was an inventory of the stores and equipment we were taking with us. And finally I described the chain of command and signals-types of radio, frequencies, schedules, codes and code words and any field signals that were unique to the task.

“As I’m sure you all know by now,” I said, “our call sign is Bravo Two Zero. The chain of command is myself as patrol commander and Vince as 2 i/c. The rest of you can fight for it.”

It was now the patrol’s chance to ask questions, after which we synchronized watches.

The air brief was given by the pilot, since he would be in command during the infil and exfil phases. He showed us a map of the route we were going to take, and talked at some length about the likely difficulty of antiaircraft sites and attack by Roland ground-to-air missiles. He told us what he wanted to happen in the back of the aircraft, and the actions on crashing. I had talked to him about this before and was secretly glad that he wanted us to split up, with the aircrew and the patrol taking their own chances. To be honest, we wouldn’t have wanted a bunch of aircrew with us, and for some reason they were not particularly keen to come with us anyway. He spoke, too, about deconfliction, because there were going to be air raids going in on surrounding targets-a number of fixed-launch sites were going to be hosed down within 6 miles of our drop-off point. Our deconfliction was arranged to enable us to slip in under these air strikes and use them for cover.

The orders group ended at about 1100. Everybody now knew what they had to do, where they were doing it, and how they were going to do it.

At lunchtime, we were told that because of deconfliction we might not be able to get in. However, we were going to attempt it anyway-you don’t know until you try. We would refuel just short of the Saudi/ Iraq border, then go over with full tanks. We did a final round of checks, loaded the kit onto wagons, and ate as much fresh food as we could get down us.

We were eager to go. The mood was very much one of let’s just get in there and do it. We’d leave it to the other blokes to run round stealing tents and kit and generally square everything away. The camp would be sorted out by the time we returned.

At 1800 we climbed into the vehicles and drove across to the Chinook. It was all rather casual, with blokes from the squadron coming up and saying, “What size are those new boots of yours-you won’t be needing them again, will you?” At our first location four or five of us had nicked some foam mattresses, operating on the usual principle: if it’s there and it’s shiny, take it. Now some of the other patrols started coming over and saying, “You won’t be needing it ever again, will you, so you can leave it for us.” They accompanied it with the motion of digging our graves.

Even the RSM (Regimental Sergeant Major) appeared. “Get in there, do the business, and come back.” That was the extent of his brief.

Bob suddenly remembered something. “I’ve fucked up,” he said to a mate. “I haven’t completed the will form. My mum’s name is down and I’ve signed it-you’ll have to dig in my kit for her address. Can you make sure it’s all sorted and handed in?”

I had a quick chat with the pilots. They’d been given sets of body armor and were going through big decisions about what to do with it-whether to sit on it so they didn’t get their bollocks shot off, or actually wear it so they didn’t get shot in the chest. They came to the conclusion that it was better to wear it on the chest, because they could live without their balls.

“Not that he has any,” said the copilot, “as you will soon find out.”

It was still light and we could see the downwash of the rotors kicking up a fierce sandstorm as the helicopter took off. When the dust settled, all we could see was blokes looking skywards and waving.

We flew low-level across the desert. At first we watched the ground, but there wasn’t much to see-just a vast area of sand and a few hills. Dotted across the desert there were peculiar circles that looked like corn circles in reverse-crops growing up rather than pushed down. They were horticultural sites that looked from the air like green sewage-treatment plants, with large watering arms turning constantly to irrigate the crops. They looked so out of place in the barren landscape.

It was last light and we were about 12 miles short of the border when the pilot spoke into the headsets.

“Get the blokes up to the window and have a look at this.”

Countless aircraft were in the sky a thousand feet above us. Orchestrated by AWACS, they were flying with split second timing along a complex network of air corridors to avoid collision. Every one of them had its forward lights on. The sky was ablaze with light. It was like Star Wars, all these different colored lights from different sizes of aircraft. We were doing about 100 knots; they must have been flying at 500 or 600. I wondered if they knew about us. I wondered if they were saying to themselves: let’s hope we can do a good job so these guys can get in and do their thing. I doubted it.

Two fighters screamed down to check us out, then flew back up.

“We’re 5Ks short of the border,” the pilot said. “Watch what happens now.”

As he spoke, and as if a single fuse controlling the Blackpool illuminations had blown, the sky was suddenly pitch-black. Every aircraft had dowsed its lights at once.

We landed in inky blackness for a hot refuel, which meant staying on board with the rotors moving. We were going to receive the final “go” or “no go” here regarding the vital deconfliction, and as the ground crew loomed out of the darkness, I watched anxiously for somebody to give an encouraging signal. One of them looked at the pilot and revolved his hand: Turnaround.

Bastard!

Another bloke ran up to the pilot with a bit of paper and pushed it through the window.

The pilot’s voice came over our headsets a moment later: “It’s a no go, no go; we’ve got to go back.”

Dinger was straight on the intercom. “Well, fuck it, let’s get over the border anyway, just to say we’ve been over there-come on, it’s just a couple of Ks away: it won’t take long to get there and back. We need to get over, just to stop the slagging when we return.”

But that wasn’t the way the pilot saw it. We stayed on the ground for another twenty minutes while he did his checks and the refueling was completed; then we lifted off and headed south. Wagons were waiting for us. We unloaded all the kit and were taken to the half-squadron location, which by this time had been moved to the other side of the airfield. People had dug shell scrapes and covered them with ponchos and bits of board and cardboard to keep out the wind. It looked like a dossers’ camp, bodies in little huddles everywhere, around hexy-block fires.

The patrol were in dark moods, not only because of the anticlimax of not getting across the border, but also because we weren’t sure what was going to happen next. I was doubly unimpressed because I had given my mattress away.

All during the day of the 20^th we just hung loose, waiting for something to happen, waiting for a slot.

We checked the kit a couple more times and tried to make ourselves a bit of a home in case we had a long wait. We got some camouflage netting up-not from the tactical point of view, because the airfield was in a secure area-but just to keep the wind off and give us some shade during the day. It gives you an illusion of protection to be sheltered under something. Once we had made ourselves comfy, we screamed around the place in LSVs (light strike vehicles) and pinkies seeing what we would nick. The place was a kleptomaniac’s dream.

We did some good exchanges with the Yanks. Our rations are far superior to the American MREs (meals ready to eat), but theirs do contain some pleasant items-like bags of M amp;M’s and little bottles of Tabasco sauce to add a little je the sais quoi to the beef and dumplings. Another fine bit of Yank kit is the strong plastic spoon that comes with the MRE pack. You can burn a little hole through the back of it, put some string through, and keep it in your pocket: an excellent, almost perfect racing spoon.

Because our foam mattresses had been whisked away to a better world during the abortive flight, we tried to get hold of some comfy US issue cots. The Americans had kit coming out of their ears, and bless their cotton socks, they’d happily swap you a cot for a couple of boxes of rations.

Little America was on the other side of the airfield. They had everything from microwaves and doughnut machines to Bart Simpson videos screening twenty four hours a day. And why not-the Yanks sure know how to fight a stylish war. Schoolkids in the States were sending big boxes of goodies to the soldiers: pictures from 6-year-olds of a good guy with the US flag, and a bad guy with the Iraqi flag, and the world’s supply of soap, toothpaste, writing material, combs, and antiperspirant. They were just left open on tables in the canteen for people to pick what they wanted.

The Yanks could not have made us more welcome, and we were straight in there, drinking frothy cappuccino and having a quick root through. Needless to say, we had most of it away.

Some of the characters were outrageous and great fun to talk to, especially some of the American pilots who I took to be members of the National Guard. They were all lawyers and sawmill managers in real life, big old boys in their forties and fifties, covered in badges and smoking huge cigars, flying their Thunderbolts and whooping “Yeah boy!” all over the sky. For some of them, this was their third war. They were excellent people, and they had amazing stories to tell. Listening to them was an education.

During the next two days we went over the plan again. Now that we had a bit more time, was there anything we could improve on? We talked and talked, but we kept it the same.

It was frustration time, just waiting, as if we were in racing blocks and the starter had gone into a trance. I was looking forward to the relief of actually being on the ground.

We had a chat with a Jaguar pilot whose aircraft had been stranded at the airfield for several days. On his very first sortie he had had to abort because of problems with a generator.

“I want to spend the rest of the war here,” he said. “The slagging I’ll get when I fly back will be way out of control.”

We felt quite sorry for him. We knew how he felt.

Finally, on the 21^st, we got the okay to go in the following night.

On the morning of the 22^nd we woke at first light. Straightaway Dinger got a fag on.

Stan, Dinger, Mark, and I were all under one cam net, surrounded by rations and all sorts of boxes and plastic bags. In the middle was a little hexy-block fire for cooking.

Stan got a brew going from the comfort of his sleeping bag. Nobody wanted to rise and shine because it was so bloody cold. We lay there drinking tea, gob bing off, and eating chocolate from the rations. Our beauty sleep had been ruined by another two Scud alerts during the night. We were sleeping with most of our kit on anyway, but it was a major embuggerance to have to pull on your boots, flak jacket, and helmet and leg it down to the slit trenches. Both times We only had to wait ten minutes for the all clear.

Dinger opened foil sachets of bangers and beans and got them on the go. Three or four cups of tea and, in Dinger’s case, three cigarettes later, we tuned in to the World Service. Wherever you are in the world, you’ll learn what’s going on from them before any other bugger tells you. We take small shortwave radios with us on all operations and exercises anyway, because if you’re stuck in the middle of the jungle, the only link with the outside world you ever get is the World Service. Everywhere you go, people are always bent over their radios tuning in, because the frequencies change depending on the time of day. We were going to take them out on this job as well, because the chances were that it was the first we’d know that the war had ended. Nobody would be able to tell us until we made com ms and that could be the day after Saddam surrendered. We took the piss out of Dinger’s radio because it’s held together with bits of tape and string. Everybody else had a digital one, and Dinger still had his old steam-powered thing that took an age to tune in.

We had heard rumors that there was going to be some mail in that day, our first load since arriving in Saudi. It would be rather nice to hear from home before we went off. I was in the process of buying a house with Jilly, and I had to sign a form giving her power of attorney. I was hoping that was going to come through; otherwise, there would be major dramas for her to sort out if I got topped.

The pilot and copilot came over, and we had a final chat about stowing the equipment. I went through the lost com ms routine and actions on contact at the OOP again, to make doubly sure we were both clear in our minds.

We spoke to the two loadies, lads in their twenties who were obviously great fans of Apocalypse Now, because the Chinook had guns hanging off it all over the place. The only things missing were the tiger-head emblems on their helmets and Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” coming out of their intercom speakers. For them, getting across the border was a once in-a-lifetime opportunity. They were loving it.

The pilots knew of some more Roland positions and had worked out a route around them, but from the way the loadies were talking you’d have thought they actually wanted to be attacked. They were gagging to get in amongst it. I imagined it would be a huge anticlimax for them if they dropped us off and came back in one piece.

I checked my orders at a table on the other side of the airfield, undistracted. Because the first infil had been aborted, I would have to deliver an orders group all over again that afternoon-not in as much detail, but going over the main points.

We waited for the elusive mail. The buzz finally went round that it had arrived and was on the other side of the airfield about half a mile away. It was 1730, just half an hour to go before moving off to the aircraft. Vince and I got into one of the LSVs and screamed round and grabbed hold of the B Squadron bag.

One of the blokes received his poll tax demand. Another was the lucky recipient of an invitation to enter a Reader’s Digest draw. I was luckier. I got two letters. One was from my mother, the first letter from either of my parents since I was maybe 17. They didn’t know I was in the Gulf, but it must have been obvious. I didn’t have time to read it. If you’re in a rush, what you can do is slit the letters open so that they appear to have been read, so as not to hurt anybody’s feelings if you don’t return. I recognized an A4 envelope from Jilly. Inside were some toffees, my favorite Pie ‘n Mix from Woolies. Oddly enough there were eight of them, one for each of us in the patrol. There was also the power of attorney letter.

The Last Supper is quite a big thing before you go out on a job.

Everybody turns up and takes the piss.

“Next time I see you I’ll be looking down as I’m filling you in,” somebody said, going through the motion of shoveling earth onto your grave.

“Nice knowing you, wanker,” somebody else said. “What sort of bike you got at home then? Anyone here to witness he’s going to give me his bike if he gets topped?”

It was a very lighthearted atmosphere, and people were willing to help out if they could in any preparation. At the same time, another lot of “fresh” turned up. The regimental quartermaster sergeant had got his hands on a consignment of chops, sausages, mushrooms, and all the other ingredients of a good fry-up. It was fantastic scoff, but one unfortunate outcome was that after being on rations for so long, it put us all in need of an urgent shit.