The One That Got Away - Junior edition

CHAPTER 8 Down to One

We’d become so confused during the night that it took us some time to work out which day this was. We decided it was Saturday morning. Time passed slowly, but we weren’t too uncomfortable. The sun was reviving us, we were chatting in low voices, and we thought the River Euphrates was only just over the next hill to the north, which was cheering.

We said to ourselves, ‘We’ll hit the river, get some water, and walk out into Syria — no problem.’ We told ourselves we were safe for the time being, and that one more good night’s push would bring us to the Syrian border. We’d put so much ground between us and the scene of the contact that we didn’t think anyone would come looking for us.

Of course, we were wondering about Vince. I hoped against hope that, like us, he’d found a warmer place; but in my heart of hearts I felt that he was dead. I imagined him lying down in a hole among the snow, falling asleep, and drifting away, without any pain or knowledge of what was happening. At the back of my mind I also kept hoping that we would see the rest of the patrol appear — that we’d hear one of them say something and they’d pop up out of the ground.

I took off my boots — one at a time, in case we were surprised — to have a look at my feet. As I thought, they were badly blistered along the sides, especially round the ball, and on the heels. But I had nothing to treat them with, and could only put my boots back on again.

We spent an hour cleaning our weapons, which were covered in mud and grit, doing them one at a time in case we got bounced. In my right-hand pouch I had a small but well-stocked kit — pull-through, four-by-two-inch cleaning patches, oil, rag, and a tool like a pocket knife fitted with a screwdriver, scraper and gouge. With this I gave my 203 a thorough going-over. I pulled a piece of four-by-two through the barrel, cleaned and oiled the working parts, and checked the loaded magazines to make sure no grit had got in among the rounds. By working carefully, I stripped the weapon and reassembled it making hardly a sound. If you release the working parts of a 203 normally, they snap forward with a sharp crack, but if you handle them gently, you don’t need to make a sound.

Then, at about midday, we heard the noise we’d already learned to dread: the jingle of bells.

Goats! Again!

We went down flat with our weapons and looked along the little valley. There they were — a scatter of brown, black, grey and dirty white animals, coming slowly into the wadi from the north-east. Then their minder appeared and sat down on a rock in full view, only fifty metres away. He was a young man with thick, curly black hair and stubbled cheeks. There he sat, daydreaming, kicking his feet, chewing on stalks of dead grass.

The goats began feeding our way. Stan and I lay still with our 203s ready. ‘Right,’ I whispered. ‘If he comes up on us, we’re going to have to take him out.’

I didn’t want to kill a civilian. But I felt certain that if the man saw us, he’d go back to the nearest habitation and give us away. It flashed through my mind that we could tie him up. But if we did that, he might die of exposure. I thought, He’s either going to escape or die — so we might as well do him now.

The goats kept feeding and moving towards us. They reached our position. When they saw us, they jerked their heads up, but that was all — a jerk, and on they’d go. All this while the herder was sitting there, looking up at the sky now and then. Certainly he hadn’t locked on to anything.

‘He’s bound to come after them,’ I breathed, ‘and if he does, we’ll do him.’

We didn’t want to fire a shot, for obvious reasons, but both of us had knives. Mine was a folding knife — a good one, but with a small blade. Stan had a k-bar bayonet on his webbing with a six- or seven-inch blade.

But Stan, being a gentleman and a good soldier, wasn’t happy. ‘Shouldn’t we take the chance of seeing if he’s got a vehicle? We could nick it and drive off.’

‘No, we’ll do him.’

The young man stood up.

He looked quite a big guy — about the size of Stan, and hefty with it. Immediately I changed my plan. ‘Stan,’ I whispered, ‘give us that knife. You grab him and I’ll do him.’

‘No,’ Stan muttered. ‘You’re not having it.’

‘Then you’d better do him…’

Suddenly it was too late. With the guy nearly on top of us, Stan jumped up and grabbed him.

‘Sit down, mate!’ he said loudly. ‘How’re you doing? Good? Right! Sit down!’

The guy jumped, and let out a stream of Arabic, but Stan forced him down on the bank-side. I sat down too, staring at him. He was in his twenties and dressed like the village idiot in a big old overcoat of what looked like dark grey tweed. His hair was messy and he had several ragged jumpers on under the overcoat and slip-on leather shoes. He kept looking at me, but I didn’t say anything.

Stan did all the talking. ‘Car?’ he asked. ‘Tractor?’ He made driving motions with his hands. ‘House?’

He drew in the air, but our visitor didn’t understand a word of English. All he said was ‘Aiwa’, which means ‘Yes’.

‘Where’s there a vehicle?’

‘Aiwa.’

‘How far to walk?’

‘Aiwa.’

‘Listen,’ Stan said after a bit. ‘I’ll go with him and see if we can get a tractor.’

It seemed incredible to me that Stan should want to go off with a total stranger. I reminded him that we were aliens in a foreign country, where we had no business to be. I knew we’d get no friendly help from the Iraqis. ‘Suppose this was World War Two,’ I said, ‘and we were a couple of German paratroopers, lost in the Welsh mountains. We meet this farm lad and try to chat him up. Of course he’d say he’s going to help us. But what does he want really? To get us in the nick. Nothing else.’

Even that didn’t change Stan’s mind. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll take the risk and go with him.’

‘No, Stan. You’re staying here.’

‘Chris, I want to go.’

I thought he was crazy. But I couldn’t force him to stay. ‘OK,’ I told him. ‘I can’t order you, because we’re on our own. But listen, mate: I don’t want you to go. It’ll mean us splitting up. You’ll be on your own. You’re making a big mistake here.’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave my weapon and webbing with you. Then I won’t look so aggressive. I’ll just walk next to him.’

I could see he was determined. ‘All right,’ I told him, ‘I’ll wait here for you till six-thirty, last light. If you’re not back by then, I’m off on this bearing.’ And I gave him the northerly course we’d already decided on.

‘Fair enough,’ he said.

‘Go on, then. When you’re out of sight, I’ll take your weapon and webbing fifty metres up that dry stream bed, and hide them there.’

So Stan stood up with the Arab and said, ‘Come on, cobber. Let’s go.’ The two of them started walking off, with the Arab whistling for his goats to follow. I crawled down to the bottom of the wadi where I sat and watched them. When they’d gone a couple of hundred metres, I suddenly thought, No! This is wrong! and I yelled out, ‘Stan! Stan, come back here!’

Back he came, almost running.

‘Think about what you’re doing,’ I told him. ‘Leave your webbing if you like, but at least take your weapon.’

‘I don’t want to look too aggressive.’

‘Sling it over your shoulder then, and carry it down the side of your body — but have it with you. And if you change your mind, put one into him and we’ll sit the day out together.’

But Stan was overboard about his new friend. ‘No, no, Chris,’ he said. ‘He’s all right. He’s offered me food.’

‘What food?’

‘It’s only a few berries, but I trust the guy. He seems friendly. If we get to a vehicle, I’ll give him a sovereign.’

Away Stan went with the Iraqi, meandering down the dry stream bed. For nearly a kilometre he remained in sight. He’d wrapped his shamag round his head, and from a distance he looked quite like another Arab. I could see the two of them trying to chat together, matey as anything. In the end they went round a bend to the left and disappeared.

Now I’m on my own, I thought.

Time crawled by. After a couple of hours I took Stan’s webbing and tucked it into the side of the stream bed, where I’d told him it would be. On top of it I left four of the extra 203 rounds which I’d taken from Vince. Then I had nothing to do but wait for dark.

As the hours dragged past, I grew more and more jumpy. Several times I imagined I heard something. Whenever that happened, I’d look out, hoping to see Stan returning.

Dusk came on. By 1730 I was very anxious. I’d have to make a decision soon. I was hungry, thirsty, cold and on my own. Six o’clock came. I took one last look back down the wadi. Night had come down, and there was still no sign. I kept hoping I’d see the lights of a vehicle heading out — but there was nothing.

It was a tough decision. My last friend had disappeared. He could still be on his way back. But when 1830 came, I thought, This is it. You can’t sit around here any longer.

So I checked my compass and started walking north.

Alone.

Saturday 26 January: Escape — Night Three

For fifteen minutes I tabbed it steadily over level, open ground, with darkness settling in on the desert all round me. Then I happened to look over my shoulder, and I saw a set of headlights coming up the wadi I’d just left. Stan’s got a vehicle after all, I thought. Brilliant!

I started running back as fast as I could. I must have been halfway back to my start-point when suddenly I saw that it wasn’t one set of lights coming towards me, but two. Immediately I thought, He can’t have two vehicles. He must have been captured, and this is the enemy. If he’d been on his own, he’d never have brought two vehicles. So I turned and ran north again.

Already I was out of breath. Behind me, the vehicles had driven up the side of the wadi and were heading straight across the open desert towards me. The clouds parted and the moon shone through, lighting the place up like day. It may have been my imagination, but my smock seemed to have become luminous, shining like an electric beacon. The old adrenalin had started up, and my heart was going like a sledgehammer. Then I saw a little bush with a shadow behind it, and threw myself down into that tiny patch of black.

As I lay there panting, I frantically sorted out my kit. I checked the magazine on the 203, and piled spare mags in a heap beside me. I opened out the 66 so that it was ready to fire. I even bent together the ends of the safety pins on my white phos grenades, so that I could whip them out quickly if need be.

For a moment I got a breather. The lights swung round, whipping wildly up and down as the vehicles went over bumps and headed back into the wadi. I heard the banging of doors. Obviously some guys had got out to have a look round the place where the goatherd had found us in the morning. I squinted through the night-sight, trying to make out what they were doing, but the glare from the lights shone everything else out. Then the vehicles moved off again and started driving about the floor of the wadi.

The moment the lights were away from me, I picked up my kit, stuffed things into the webbing pouches down my front, and legged it.

Now I was really running, looking right and left for cover. Suddenly the lights swung round again and they were coming at me. I dropped down and got my kit out once more. I set up the 203 with the battle-sight, and as I piled the spare magazines, it went through my mind that this was just like range practice. I cocked the 66 again, lifted the bomb-sights on the 203, and waited.

I didn’t know if they’d seen me or not. But they were driving towards me at a steady roll. I got the 66 lined up on the leading pair of lights and listened to the sound of my heart pounding.

The lights were still coming. Obviously the vehicles weren’t going to stop. Someone on board must have realized that I would be heading due north, going for the river, and they were driving on that bearing. The wagons were rolling at maybe 15 mph, and the lights were quite steady. They would pass so close that there was no chance of them not seeing me.

It was them or me.

I hugged the ground and tried to stop myself shaking. An age seemed to pass as the vehicles ground on.

Fifty metres, and they kept coming.

There were two Land Rover-type vehicles. I couldn’t tell how many men they might contain. As they approached, I held the sight of the 66 aligned between the front pair of lights. When they were twenty metres off, I pulled the trigger.

Whoooosh! went the launcher, right in my ear. Out front there was a big bang as the rocket took the vehicle head-on. There was no flash. Just a heavy explosion, and a cloud of white smoke billowing out in the moonlight.

The vehicle rolled to a stop.

I dropped the 66, grabbed the 203 and lined up the grenade-sight on the second pair of lights, a few metres to the left of the first. From maybe forty metres I smacked that one right in the bonnet.

Then I was up and running towards the enemy.

In a moment I had reached the first vehicle and put a burst into it. Coming to the second, I sprayed it all down the side, through the canvas back. Then I looked into the back and put another burst in. There were men in the back wearing dishdashes. I let off another burst into the driver’s compartment. Then I had to change magazines. At the front again, I put more rounds into the first vehicle. Both vehicles were now in bits.

Only then did I realize I’d left the other magazines piled up at my firing point. I sprinted back to them, snatched them up, stuffed them down the front of my smock and ran.

I ran till I thought my heart was going to burst. I imagined that everybody was on to me and chasing me. The moon was so bright that I felt as if a spotlight was beaming down on me. I was swept up in panic, just as I had been when chased as a kid. It was as if I’d been found out, and was on my own. I ran till I had to slow down: my throat was heaving, my chest exploding, my mouth dry as the desert. I’d had no water all through that day, and soon I was so tired that it was painful even to walk.

All the time I was turning to look behind, to see if any more lights were coming up — but nothing showed. At last I thought it was safe to stop, sit down and sort out my equipment.

After a contact like that, it takes time to recover. Gradually I chilled out and got myself together. One minor improvement was that I had less to carry: once I’d fired the 66 I threw away the tube, which was useless to the Iraqis.

Walking again, I kept on for a couple of hours towards the north. All the time I was wondering what had happened to Stan, and hoping he hadn’t come back in one of the vehicles. Or had he sent them up to me? No, I decided: he couldn’t have. It must have been the goatherd who brought the Iraqis back to the wadi; no one else could have directed them onto my position with such accuracy. My intuition about him had been right. I should never have let Stan go off with him.

The question was, what had happened back on the site of the contact while I had been heading north? If anyone had got away from one of the vehicles I’d hit, or if someone else had found the wrecks, word might have gone out that another enemy soldier was on the run. People would surely guess that I was heading for the Euphrates. From the firepower I’d put down, they might even have thought that there were several of us.

I tabbed on and on through the moonlight. Now the desert was rolling in gentle undulations, and I believed that the river was going to appear over every rise. Then, to my right, I heard dogs barking, kids shouting, grown-ups calling. As I went down on one knee to listen, I saw the red tracer of anti-aircraft fire going up in the distance. Obviously there were habitations somewhere close to me, and the people I could hear were watching that nice firework display on the horizon. Then I heard the far-off roar of jets. They must have been miles off, attacking some target, and the red tracer was curving silently up towards the stars.

Half an hour later I spotted a glimmer of light ahead. The night-sight picked out three stationary vehicles, with light coming out of the side. I went down and watched for signs of people on foot, in case a mobile patrol was being deployed to cut me off. Men on foot could be strung out in an extended line, sweeping the desert ahead of them. But I saw nothing more, so I avoided the vehicles and carried on.

Again, as I came to the top of a rise, I was convinced that I must find the Euphrates in front of me — but no. The next thing I saw was a set of pylons. I’d been expecting them for some time, because they were marked on my map. Beyond them was a main supply route, and some fifteen kilometres beyond that, the river. When I sat down under the power lines and scanned ahead, I found I could see the road, and a wide-open flat area beyond it — but no water.

I knew that in Biblical times the Euphrates had been a mighty waterway, and I assumed that it must still be pretty big. But after I crossed the main supply route, all I hit was a huge system of dry wadis, with steep walls up to twenty metres high. Obviously they’d once been a river bed. Maybe in wet weather flash floods would turn the channels into a rushing river again. I was gagging for want of water, and getting so confused in my mind that suddenly I thought, I hope this isn’t the Euphrates. Surely it can’t have dried out since the Bible? If it has, I’m finished.

Panic was making me walk faster and scrabble down through the tumbled, loose rock. I kept thinking, There’s got to be water at the bottom of this. At its lowest point the river bed seemed to open out, and as I looked down through the night-sight, I made out a line of palm trees running across my front from left to right. Also, away to my right, I could see the houses of a village. I still couldn’t see any water, but I thought, This has got to be the river — the Euphrates, at last. I started walking down towards the trees, which I presumed were growing on the bank.

The closer I came, the warmer the air seemed to be — or at least, the atmosphere seemed stiller and calmer. I kept about 300 metres from the edge of the village, but dogs came out and started barking. As there was no wind, they could hardly have smelled me. They’d probably picked up the noise of my feet. The houses were dark. They may have been blacked out on purpose, but more likely the people in them were asleep.

Moving along to the boundary wall of the village, I made my way carefully down to the river through oblong fields. No crops were sprouting as yet, but the ground had been well tilled, and the fields were divided up by irrigation ditches, with grass growing here and there. I tried to keep out of the fields, in case I left footprints in the soft soil. Instead, I kept to the ditches, which as yet had no water in them.

At last, between the trunks of the palm trees, I saw water. Irrigation pumps were working all along the bank: the night was full of their quick, steady beat — boop, boop, boop, boop. I could hear many different pumps working up and down the valley. For several minutes I kept still, watching for any movement. The cultivation seemed to end about ten metres from the edge of the water, and my night-sight revealed piles of cut bushes, each about two metres square, sticking out from the bank into the stream, one about every fifty metres. At first I couldn’t make out what they were for, then it occurred to me that they were probably makeshift jetties, for men to fish off or to bring boats alongside. Using one for cover, I crept right down to the water’s edge.

Crouching next to the pile, I got out my water bottles, but found that at the bank the water was only a few millimetres deep — a thin skin over mud. I tried to wade out, but I hadn’t taken three steps before my feet plunged deep into silt. In a second I was up to my knees, then up to my waist. I was sinking. I threw my rifle back onto the pile of bushes and dragged myself out, soaked up to the waist and coated in slimy, silty mud.

For my next attempt, I crawled out over one of the platforms of bushes. As my weight came onto it, the whole structure sank into the stream. I could feel water coming through my clothes at the front, but I filled both bottles, crawled back out, and drank one down.

I swallowed and gasped and choked, trying to stifle the noise. The relief of getting water down my neck was incredible. I shone my torch beam down the neck of the full bottle, and saw that the water was black and foul-looking, but it tasted quite good. I crawled out to fill the empty bottle again.

At that point the river was a couple of hundred metres wide, and I could see no buildings or cultivations on the far bank. In the moonlight the land beyond glowed white, as if it were covered in salt. I thought about swimming across, because it would be safer on the far side. But although I’m a strong swimmer, I realized that to go in with my weapon and webbing would be asking for trouble. The water was icy cold, and although the surface was smooth, I could see that a strong current was flowing out in the middle of the stream. If I’d got into difficulties halfway across, that would have been it.

By then it was nearly five o’clock in the morning. I needed somewhere to lie up for the day.

I moved cautiously out between scattered houses, up to a dirt road. Again a dog started barking, so I waited a couple of minutes before going on up into the dry wadi systems. Once into the rocks I turned on my TACBE and tried speaking into it. There was no response, so I left the beacon on for a while. As I climbed, the rocky channels grew steeper and steeper. A couple of hundred metres above the road, they came to a dead end. There I found a rock a metre or so high which was casting a black shadow in the moonlight. I curled up beside it, with my map case beneath my legs, one shamag round them and the other round my head. I lay there feeling fairly safe in that patch of deep darkness.

Before settling down, I gave myself the only treat at my disposal: I got out my flask, and took a nip of whisky. The spirit burned as it went down into my empty stomach, but it gave me a momentary lift.

I was so exhausted that in spite of the cold I kept falling asleep, only to come round with a start a few minutes later, racked by shudders. It was a real pain to be wet again; having spent hours with Stan getting dry, I was now soaked all up the front, with my sodden clothes clinging to me, and the damp making the cold even worse.

When first light came, with dawn breaking early under clear skies, I realized that I wasn’t really in any sort of cover. At night the shadow of the rock had looked comforting; if someone had walked past in the dark, he wouldn’t have seen me. Now I found I was lying out in the open.

Looking up onto the north bank of the wadi, I saw a hollow among some loose rocks. I walked up to it, lay inside, and piled up a few more rocks at either side to break up the outline of my body. That was the best place I could find in which to spend the day.

And it was only then that it really hit me how much I was on my own.