Chris Ryan

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

Chris Ryan was born in 1961 in a village near Newcastle. At the age of 16 he attached himself unofficially to 'C' Squadron of 23rd Special Air Service, the territorial regiment based at Prud�hoe, in Northumberland. Over the next seven years he covered hundreds of miles of moor and mountain on training exercises. In 1984 he joined the 22nd SAS, the regular Regiment, and completed three tours which took him to many parts of the world on operations and exer�cises. He also worked extensively in the counter-terrorist field, serving as assa ulter, sniper, and finally Sniper Team Commander on the SP or Special Projects team. For his escape from Iraq in January 1991 he was awarded the Military Medal. He left the SAS in 1994, and now lives in the south of England with his wife and daughter. . He is the author of two bestselling novels, Stand By, Stand By and Zero Option.

for Sarah

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY CHRIS RYAN, M.M. ARROW

This edition published by Arrow Books Limited 1996 7 9 10 8 6 All rights reserved Copyright 1995 Chris Ryan The right of Chris Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser First published in the United Kingdom in 1995 by Century Random House UK Ltd 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW 2SA Arrow Books Ltd Random House UK Ltd 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA Random House Australia (Pty) Limited 20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point, Sydney New South Wales 2061, Australia Random House New Zealand Limited 18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland 10, New Zealand Random House South Africa (Pty) Limited Endulini, 5a Jubilee Road, Parktown 2193, South Africa Random House UK Limited Reg. No. 954009 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Papers used by Random House UK Limited are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin ISBN 0-09-964161-5 Typeset by SX Composing DTP, Rayleigh, Essex Printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank the following: Duff Hart-Davis for all his encouragement, patience and valuable time that he spent on this project. All my family and friends for the patience and understanding they showed me throughout this whole adventure. My editor, Mark Booth and his team at Random House for their help and hard work. Jeff Pope and Paul Greengrass at LWT for their initial debrief. Last but not least, Barbara Levy my agent, for pointing me in the right direction.

CONTENTS 1. Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 1 2. Contact! 35 3. Down To Two 64 4. Down To One 85 5. Boxing Clever 119 6. Echoes Of Africa 141 7. Over The Border 149 8. Safe Or Sorry? 173 9. Guest Of The Government 189 10. Back To Base 210 11. Counting The Cost 238 12. Wash-Up 253

IN THE BEGINNING I believed, But found the time for doubting. He made no sound, I heard the Devil shouting. I wanted peace, I did not want the glory. I walked in Hell, And now I tell my story. I sing sad song, I did not write the music. I find sad words Waiting � just inside my mind. I played my part, But seldom did I choose it. I held a gun, I did not want to use it. Call it fate or destiny � By either name, it troubles me. And now, If you should look into my eyes, By chance you might just see A sad, sad soul that sheds its tears, Yet lets the heart go free. And in between the two of them If you should read my mind, You'll know the soul still sheds its tears, For deeds left far behind. But if you see the eagle there, Then don't ignore the dove, For now that all the killing's done There's nothing left but love. J. Miles

GLOSSARY AWACS - Basha BCR Bergen BG Casevac CO Comms DF Director, The DPM E & E ERV FMB FOB GPS GPMG Head-shed Int Loadie LUP Magellan MSR NBC OC OP PNG PSI Airborne warning and control system aircraft Sleeping shelter Battle casualty replacement Haversack Bodyguard (noun or verb) Casualty evacuation Commanding officer of the regiment Communications Direction finding (equipment) Officer commanding Special Forces, generally a brigadier Disruptive pattern material camouflage clothes Escape and evasion Emergency rendezvous Forward mounting base Forward operating base Global positioning system (navigation aid) General-purpose machine-gun (Gympi) Headquarters Intelligence Crewman on RAF military flight Lying-up position Brand name of GPS Main supply route Nuclear, biological and chemical Officer commanding the squadron Observation post Passive night goggles Permanent staff instructor REME Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers Rupert Officer RTU Return to unit RV Rendezvous SAM Surface-to-air missile Sangar Fortified enclosure Satcom Telephone using satellite transmission Shamag Shawl used by Arabs as head-dress Shreddies Army-issue underpants SOP Standard operating procedure SP Team Special Projects or counter-terrorist team SQMS Squadron Quartermaster Sergeant SSM Squadron Sergeant Major Stag Sentry duty TACBE Tactical rescue beacon TEL Transporter-erector-launcher vehicle U/S Unserviceable VCP Vehicle control point Weapons 203 Combination of 5.56 calibre automatic rifle (top barrel) and 40mm. grenade launcher below .50 Heavy machine-gun 66 Disposable rocket launcher GPMG 7.62 medium-calibre general purpose machine-gun Minimi 5.56 calibre machine-gun M19 Rapid-fire grenade launcher

one STAND BY . . . STAND BY . . . GO! Our target was a disused mental hospital � a large, red�brick, Victorian building, once handsome but now derelict, standing in spacious grounds that had gone to seed. Accord-ing to the exercise scenario, the five Middle Eastern terrorists who had gone to ground inside were holding nine hostages captive, and after a three-day siege matters were moving swiftly to a head. As commander of the Sniper Team, I was in charge of eight men, pre-positioned with their rifles at observation points in outhouses, trees and on the ground. Two men were watching each face of the hospital and sending back running commentaries over their throat-mike radios to the Command Centre, which had been established in a separate building some two hundred metres from the front door. Each face of the hospital had been accorded a special code for instant recognition. From the Command Centre the police negotiator was talking to the chief terrorist, but the man's patience appeared to be running out. He was demanding safe con�duct to Heathrow for himself and his colleagues, threatening that if transport were not provided immediately he would shoot one of the hostages. Meanwhile, the officer commanding the SP (Special Projects, or counter-terrorist) team was continuously refining his plan for a deliberate assault on the building. One sniper had just reported, 'There's a terrorist moving in a particular window,' when a shot cracked out from within the hospital. The negotiator established that a hostage had been executed. The terrorists called for a stretcher party to take the body away. The front door opened briefly, and a 2 The One That Got Away limp figure was bundled out. A four-man team ran in to col�lect it. Then the chief terrorist threatened to kill another hostage in half an hour if his demands were not met. The moment had come for the police to hand over to the military. The police chief signed a written order passing command to OC `13' Squadron, the senior SAS officer pre�sent, who gave his assault team orders for a deliberate option. The moment he had finished, the assault groups moved to their entry points. Now it was just a question of waiting for my snipers to get as many terrorists in their sights as possible. Listening to their commentaries on the radio net, the OC suddenly called out the order we'd all been waiting for: 'I have con�trol. STAND BY . . . STAND BY . . . GOP For the past two days an eerie silence had prevailed in the grounds of the old hospital. Now a volley of rounds went down and the whole place erupted into action. Two vehicles screamed up to the building and disgorged a swarm of black-clad assaulters. Explosive charges blew in the win�dows. Within seconds a Chinook helicopter was poised above the roof and more black figures were fast-roping out of it, to abseil down to the windows or enter through the sky�lights. Stun grenades blasted off; smoke poured out. The radio carried a babble of shots, shouts, explosions and orders. In a matter of minutes the building had been cleared, the terrorists theoretically killed and the hostages rescued. The assault commander reported that he had control, and com�mand was formally handed back to the police. Then the OC went in to start taking statements, and the exercise wound down. The guys were pouring with sweat inside their black kit, but elated that things had gone well. As always, the assault had been realistic in every detail, and had been ex�cellent training. `Well done, everybody,' said the OC at his preliminary debrief. 'That was pretty good.' Because we'd had three tough days in a row, and were now facing a five-hour run back to base, he didn't go into detail. Rather, he set 1100 on Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 3 Friday morning as the time for the main wash-up in the squadron office. `Thin out, guys,' said the sergeant major. 'On your bikes.' So we packed our kit into the vehicles and set out for Hereford. But on the way events took an unexpected turn. It was 2 August 1990, and on the news we heard that Saddam Hussein had ordered the Iraqi army to invade Kuwait. `So what?' said one of the guys scornfully. 'He's just a wanker.' `Don't be too sure of it,' said someone else. 'It'll make big trouble, and the odds are we'll find ourselves in there. Maybe some of the guys have gone already.' Speculation about Iraq and the possibility of war in the Gulf helped speed our journey home � but I don't think any of us realised just how Saddam's aggression against his neighbours was going to change our existence. For the rest of that year our lives were dominated by un�certainty. Two squadrons � 'A' and 'D' � soon went out to the Gulf for build-up training; but until the last minute, we in 'B' Squadron were assured that we would not be going, as it was our turn to take over what are known in the SAS as team tasks � assignments for which small teams of men are needed in various parts of the world. Rumours began flying. As the likelihood of war increased, it was said that `G' Squadron would go out to the Middle East as BCRs � battle casualty replacements � and since the commanding officer at Regimental Headquarters was ex-'G' Squadron, the story gained credence. Different options were frequently discussed, one of them being that we might become sky-marshals on civilian flights to the Middle East � travelling ostensibly as normal fare-paying passengers, but in fact carrying weapons � to deal with any terrorist who might attempt a hijack. The idea seemed quite plausible; on the SP team we'd done any num�ber of assaults on and inside aircraft, so that we were thoroughly familiar with the possibilities. But then the rumour died a natural death. 4 The One That Got Away Throughout November and December, men were being selected for team tasks, and it was my luck to be chosen for an Everest expedition which a friend of mine, Harry Taylor, was planning. When I joined the Regiment six years earlier, he and I had found ourselves in the same troop. We part�nered off together, and had formed a good rapport. He left the SAS in 1986, and by the autumn of 1990 he was pre�paring for his second attempt on Everest. On his first he had tried to ascend the unconquered North-East Ridge, but had been driven off by bad weather. Now his aim once again was to climb the North-East Ridge � Alpine-style, with a partner, Russell Bryce � but this time I would be coming up the North Ridge with Sherpas, bringing lightweight para�chutes. The plan was that I should meet the other two at the North Col; we would then climb to the summit together, jump off, and paraglide back down to basecamp. Everything was geared to breaking records: if I could reach the summit without oxygen, it would be a personal record for me; if the others came up via the North-East Ridge, they too would establish a first � as would we all by parachuting from the top. I was quite well qualified for the role, having done plenty of parachute jumps, and because I had spent eighteen months in the Alps on a German Army mountain guide course, during which time I became proficient at climbing in snow and ice. In October the adjutant gave me permission to join the Everest party. Once my stint on the SP team was finished, he said, I could take three months off. I went to an exhibition in Harrogate where Berghaus, the mountain specialists, fit-� ted me up with equipment. Already I had my mind focused on the Himalayas, and I was planning to start build-up training with hard walking in the Brecon Beacons early in the New Year. Preparations for the Gulf were playing havoc with the annual rugby knockout competition between six squadron teams. Perhaps it was just as well, because so much needle develops during those matches that things become vicious, Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 5 and guys are sometimes written off due to injuries for as long as six months. One of the players was a good friend of the England skipper, Will Carling, and invited him to bring the national team to train. The players could stay in the officers' or sergeants' mess, he said, and they would be saved the usual hassle of fans clamouring for autographs whenever they showed their noses out of doors. He also suggested that England might take on the Regiment in a friendly game. Carling came up with a couple of colleagues for a check round, but one look at a match between squad�rons was enough. 'Not a chance!' they said. 'We'll not play this lot. There'd be guys left crippled all over the field.' So that little plan never came to fruition. A week before Christmas, we were dragged into the Briefing Room at Hereford and told that half of 'B' Squad�ron was going to deploy to the Middle East after all. `G` Squadron would take over the SP team. Everyone who had been detailed to go began laughing and joking, and saying, `Great!' The guys still allocated for team tasks were seriously disappointed, and angled to join the Gulf party. But I think that privately most people were concerned that the conflict could develop into a big and nasty war. We reckoned that if Israel came in, Syria and Jordan might side with Saddam Hussein; things could-easily get out of hand, and half the Middle East would go up in flames. There was also the threat that Saddam would use chemical or nuclear weapons. I was excited by the prospect of war, but I hoped that if the deployment did come off it would be a quick one, so that I could return to the team training for Everest. When I heard the news, I went home and said to Janet, my wife: 'Listen � we're heading out.' Being a calm, level�headed woman, she took it well. Normally, SAS guys say nothing to their wives and families about what they're doing, but in this case it was obvious where we were going: after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, there had been so much coverage on television and in the newspapers � our destina�tion could only have been the Gulf. 6 The One That Got Away Christmas was not a relaxed time. The Regiment was stood-to throughout the holiday period, and we were busy getting our green kit ready. (In SAS terms, 'green' refers to normal military operations as opposed to 'black' work, like that on the SP team, for which you wear black gear from head to foot.) When you've been out of the system � that is, away from military duties � for a while, as I had, your kit's not as it should be, and it takes a couple of weeks of hard graft to get everything sorted out. On the Alpine guides' course in France, Italy and Ger�many I had learnt German, skiing, climbing, mountain rescue work, weather prediction and how to clear ava�lanches with explosives, but no real soldiering. Before that, I'd done nine months on the SP team as an assaulter � so again there was no military work involved. After Germany, I returned to the SP team for another nine months, this time as Sniper Commander. So altogether I'd been in black roles for at least three years, and had not worried too much about having the right equipment at hand, all sorted into the cor�rect places. Now I brought my webbing and bergen home to paint them in desert camouflage colours. We were having an ex�tension built on to our house, and a labourer called John was digging the footings. Seeing me at work outside, he came up and asked what I was doing. `Just painting my webbing.' `Those colours are a bit light, aren't they?' `Well,' I said carefully, 'you'd be surprised. It works quite well.' In fact he was right: I had the colours too light and sandy, as I was to find out to my cost. One of the rules within the Regiment is that all married men should have life insurance. Jan and I had a policy already, so we were all right; but as soon as the deployment was announced, pressure to take out policies fell on those who weren't already covered. Naturally the insurance com�panies put up the shutters, having heard where we were going, and those who did get policies had to pay high pre�miums. The result was a minor panic: in normal times the Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 7 guys try to get away without paying premiums, but now, with a war in prospect, the future suddenly looked very different. On New Year's Eve, with my departure imminent, Jan and I got a friend to babysit our daughter Sarah, who was just over two, and went downtown to a bar. But after one drink we looked at each other, returned home, and sat at the dining-room table, discussing painful questions � What would happen if I didn't come back? Should she marry again? Where would Sarah go to school? � and so on. We stayed up until three or four o'clock, and became very emo�tional. I wasn't concerned about myself or about Jan, who I knew would be able to look after herself. The person I wor�ried about was Sarah; if I went, what sort of a life would she have? If the Gulf conflict were to escalate into a major war, the SAS would become a small cog in a huge machine. Until then � during my service, at any rate � we'd always been the ones who called the shots, who had responded to particular threats. Even in Northern Ireland, we could to some extent choose our own ground. Another advantage was that our physical appearance was always much the same as that of the natives. In Iraq we would be operating among Arabs, im�mediately recognisable as aliens, without any friendly forces or civilians to back us up. On top of these worries was the threat of chemical warfare. It was impossible to say how dangerous things might become, but the uncertainty alone was enough to put the wind up even seasoned operators. Next evening Sarah's godfather, John, a friend of mine in `A' Squadron who'd been my best man, came round to the house and wrote out an unofficial will � a letter saying that if he was killed, I (or Janet) was to make sure that his house was sold; �10,000 would go to Sarah, the rest of the money to his mother, his stereo to his brother, and so on. Packing our kit took some time. All our weapons were bundled together and went separately, rolled up in canvas sleeves. When I asked the SQMS if he'd included pistols, he said, 'Yeah � twenty of them,' and that reassured me, since pistols were essential back-up weapons, which we 8 The One That Got Away would need in case our own weapons failed or if we were caught in a confined space like a vehicle or an observation post. Most of us would be carrying M16 203s � a com�bination of 5.56 calibre automatic rifle in the top barrel and grenade launcher below � or Minimi machine-guns. Both are over a metre long and awkward to handle or conceal at close quarters. Personal equipment was our own affair. As I was sorting mine, I asked the SQMS if I could draw some cold-weather mountaineering gear. Nah,' he replied. 'You're going to the fucking desert, yer dick! It won't be cold there.' He laughed at my request as if he was the regimental expert on desert warfare. Little did he know what the
winter in Iraq would be like. In spite of his brush-off, I kept thinking that we might end up at high alti�tudes, in the mountains of northern Iraq on the Turkish border, where snow might be lying. It was as if I had some premonition. But I did nothing about it, and most of us didn't take any cold-weather gear at all. At a briefing early in January the OC came up with a statement to the effect that if war broke out we might find ourselves 300 miles inside Iraq, taking out various installa�tions. We thought that could mean somewhere round Baghdad. Back at home, on an atlas, I drew a circle with a radius of 300 miles from Kuwait and the Iraqi border. Jan and I talked about the Euphrates, which runs out of Syria and right through Iraq until it joins the Tigris at Basra. From school Jan remembered that ancient civilisations had flourished in the fertile land along the two big rivers: they had been among the most important waterways then, and the land between them, known as Mesopotamia, had been called the cradle of civilisation. I wondered idly what the Euphrates would look like now. That evening I telephoned my parents. I always did this before going somewhere. I'd just say, 'I'm off,' and normally they'd reply, 'All right. See you, then. Take care.' But this time things were different. There was a feeling that the war might last a long time, and that it would turn nasty. Mum Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 9 and Dad did their best not to sound upset, but when my younger brother Keith came on the phone he started crying, and it cracked everybody else off. I said, 'Eh � stop that. Everything's going to be fine.' But the conversation brought home to me the fact that we weren't playing any more. At last we heard that we were to fly on the night of Satur�day 5 January. Being one of the senior guys in the party, I went into camp to make sure that everyone was ready. One of the lads said, 'Bob and Rich are in the club, and they're shitfaced.' `Jesus! Where's their kit?' `They haven't packed it yet.' I got one man to go to Bob's room and one to Rich's, tell�ing them to pack everything they could see, and bring it up to the guardroom. Then another lad and I went down to the club and dragged the two boozers out. Both very short men, they were propping up the bar, pissed out of their brains and giggling like schoolgirls. The rest of us walked them slowly to the coach, laughing and joking to keep them quiet. They gibbered away happily to each other as we got them aboard and sat them down at the back � and away we went to RAF Brize Norton, everyone else very quiet, just chatting to each other, shooting the shit. The Tristar landed at Cyprus to refuel, then flew on to the Gulf, where it taxied up behind a hangar. Getting off into the warm night, we found the OC, SSM and SQMS lined up waiting for us at the bottom of the steps, all wearing desert kit with shamags, or Arab shawls, wrapped round their necks like scarves. It was our first sight of anyone dressed like that, and it rammed home to us where we were. A Hercules was parked alongside and we jumped into the back. Normally RAF crewmen are sticklers for the rules, and every time you board an aircraft they make you sit down and buckle up. But now, on operations, there were no seats or straps, so we pleased ourselves and sat on the metal deck for the short flight up to our Forward Mounting Base, known as Victor. The head loadie (loadmaster) said, 'Hold tight, because we're going to do an operational take-off.' 10 The One That Got Away The pilot revved his engines until they were screaming and the whole aircraft began to judder; then he let go his brakes and we were hurled forward and heaved into the air. Fifteen minutes later he went diving in and landed with a couple of heavy thumps and violent deceleration. At Victor a hangar became our temporary home. A heap of bergens, weapons piled in big rolls, a stack of American cots, boxes of radios, medical kit, demolition equipment �everything looked as though it had arrived just that minute. We gathered round for a quick briefing from the SSM: 'No walking around in your shreddies when the RSM's about . . . There's a couple of you need haircuts . . . Don't go into the Int hangar unless you're invited . . . Let's have the hangar tidy, fellers . . . Keep your kit up together round your bed space . . . I want the place swept out periodically . . Then the SQMS talked about the stores. 'OK,' he said, `the stores are there. There's rations there, but I don't want you going into them. If you need any kit, come to me . . . the ammo bunker is next to the cookhouse . . . Cookhouse timings: six to seven breakfast, twelve to one lunch, six to seven dinner . . . Grab yourself a bed, get a space . . . We'll start training tomorrow morning.' The. OC also gave us a brief, which amounted to his personal perception of how the build-up to war was going. He said that plans for Special Forces were still fluid. 'A' and `ID' Squadrons were already well advanced with their build-up training for deployment far behind Iraqi lines, and were out in the desert doing a squadron range package �that is, putting in squadron attacks which use all weapons, including .50 Browning heavy machine-guns, mortars, LAW 90 rocket launchers, Milan anti-tank missile launchers, and � most effective of all � M19s, high-speed grenade launchers, in effect machine-guns firing bombs. As for `B' Squadron � the OC said he hoped to get us a few vehicles, which we would have to convert for desert operations. He promised to keep us updated on the way things were looking, then told us to get our heads down before we started training next day. We each found a cot and Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 11 set it up against the wall of the hangar, with a six-foot table across the foot of the bed and mosquito nets rigged on poles above � and that was to be our home for the next ten days. Morning revealed that we were well out in the desert, at one of several different camps dotted about a vast training area. Most of the desert was a flat plain of hard, beige-coloured sand, but every now and then runs of low dunes broke the monotony; on these ridges, which were maybe thirty feet high, a few tufts of dry grass and the odd tree were growing, and the sand was very soft, so that vehicles often got stuck. The wind had sculpted the sand into waves, which gave the landscape an attractive appearance. Approaching Victor you came over a rise, and there was a high chain-link fence surrounding the large hangars and a runway, with sand-dunes lapping the perimeter wire. The base had been built as a parachute school; the hangars were for storage of chutes and other equipment and there were tall towers for hanging chutes to dry. At night the perimeter was brightly illuminated. We began build-up training, and there was plenty to organise: radios, satellite communications, TACBEs, NBC drills. As a trained medic, I set up some medical instruction, teaching guys how to put drips in, how to pack gunshot wounds to stop bleeding, how to treat heat exhaustion. To demonstrate intravenous techniques, I grabbed a 'volun�teer' from the front row, choosing someone lean, because he had prominent veins; tough though the SAS may be, some of them were also pretty squeamish, and it's not unknown for them to faint when it comes to injections. Most of our training took place inside our hangar, but we also went on the ranges to zero our weapons, which included 203s, Minimi machine-guns (also 5.56 calibre), and the more potent general-purpose machine-guns (GMPGs, known as gympis), which fire 7.62 rounds, have a greater range and are harder-hitting than the Minimis. There was one set of ranges only a couple of hundred yards away, and a larger complex three hours out into the desert. We'd fired the weapons already on a gallery range in Hereford, but 12 The One That Got Away because they'd all been packed up, loaded and unloaded several times, we needed to zero them again. The trouble was, we were short of ammunition. For our contact drills on foot � practising reaction when you bump into enemy�we had only thirty or forty rounds per man. In a full practice for a single contact � contact front, contact left or right, contact rear � you can easily fire a couple of hundred rounds. We drilled in groups of four or six, as if we were patrolling along. Cardboard targets would appear ahead, somebody would shout, 'CONTACT FRONT!' and we'd split into pairs to fight our way back, each pair covering the others as they moved. The SOP, or standard operating procedure, was never to go forward after a con�tact, always to move back. For one thing, we never knew the size of the force opposing us, and in a reconnaissance patrol there were too few of us to take on any major enemy unit. For another, we couldn't carry enough ammunition for a prolonged engagement. Working in small groups, our im�mediate aim was to shoot our way clear of trouble, which gave us a better chance of escaping uninjured. But now in training, with our severely limited ammunition, all we could do when someone called 'Contact!' was to go to ground and put in one round each; then we were out of rounds � and doing it dry is never the same. At that stage we had no 203 grenades, and we badly needed some to zero our sexton sights � pieces of auxiliary kit that you can bolt on to the side of the weapon to improve accuracy. We hadn't been issued with these sights, but I'd had one for years and had brought it with me, so now I fitted it myself. We seemed to be short of everything, not least proper desert vehicles. What we needed were purpose-built, long�wheel-base 110 Land-Rovers, known as 'Pinkies' ever since they'd been painted pink for the Oman campaign of the 1970s. 'A' and D Squadrons both had Pinkies, which they had brought out with them; the vehicles had mounts for heavy machine-guns and posts for Milan anti-tank missile launchers. All we could get were short-wheel-base 90 Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 13 Land-Rovers, which had no seat-belts or gun-mountings, and were derisively known as Dinkies'. We also had one bigger truck, a Unimog, to act as a mother craft, carrying ammunition. Under the guidance of a sergeant from Mobility Troop, we got stuck in and stripped down the Land-Rovers, taking off the doors, tailgates, wing-mirrors and canvas tops, re�moving windscreens, fixing hessian over the lights and mirrors to prevent any reflection at night, and welding bas�kets for jerricans on to the sides. Somebody said that when the war was over, we would have to put the vehicles back to�gether again, and we looked at each other, thinking, 'You bet!' But we kept all the pieces and piled them in a corner of the hangar. We also had three trials motorbikes, but only a handful of us had been trained to ride them. With bikes of our own at home, we had plenty of experience, and we took the Armstrongs out and practised throwing them around in the desert. Even as we worked, we were looking at our Dinkies and thinking, 'Bollocks! This is crap!' When we practised navi�gation and drove about the sand-dunes, we wasted a tremendous amount of time getting bogged down and having to dig the Land-Rovers out. When we had a day doing vehicle contact drills, everything became farcical: we tried to fire the gympis off sandbags piled on the bonnet, which was hopeless, and when the drivers reversed hard into a J-turn, guys started being thrown out. With the whole squadron watching the range-work, a big Australian called Stan was flung out at high speed and cartwheeled half-way across the desert with his gympi attached to him, so that he was burnt by the hot barrel. We laughed at the time, but underneath we were alarmed by the thought that we might be sent across the border in these vehicles and might have to use them for real: what looked funny now might easily be disastrous later. We also experimented with six of us standing in the back of the Un�imog and firing from there: it was like the chuck wagon in a cowboy film, with the good guys popping off at the Indians. 14 The One That Got Away But we soon found that it was impossible to hit anything, because at any speed the vehicle bounced up and down out�rageously. In general, it was pathetic trying to operate with the wrong equipment, and altogether our training was poor. The other two squadrons had far better facilities. The reason for this was simple: they were the ones who were supposed to be going into Iraq; at that stage we were no more than BCRs. Nevertheless, we were still hoping that we'd be deployed. Wild ideas started coming up. There was talk of `B' Squadron parachuting into Kuwait City, which had been occupied by Iraqi forces. The idea was that we would cap�ture a big block of flats and direct mortar and artillery fire on to Iraqi positions. Also, being snipers, we could fire from the building and take individuals out that way. The originator of this plan � whoever he was � didn't seem to have realised that once the Iraqis saw where we were, they would simply blow the shit out of the place � and we would have no means of escape. The RAF planners actively considered throwing us out of a Hercules at 400 or 600 feet (the usual height is between 800 and 1,000), and insisted that we made a prac�tice jump at that height. One suicide mission had been proposed for `B' Squadron during the Falklands war, and now here was another. Half the guys were going to be knackered by the jump alone. On the SP team, I had been on one practice jump in which six�teen out of thirty men were injured � not killed, but put out of action. This time we had drawn and fitted the parachutes, and we were about to walk out of the hangar for the training jump when our own OC cancelled the option. Immediately, another rumour came up, even crazier � we were to jump into Baghdad and take out essential installa�tions such as power-stations. But soon it was found that cruise missiles could do the job from a distance of several hundred miles. The desert around the base was exactly as I'd expected it to be � hot and sandy, with plenty of dunes and undulations to give cover. In spite of the limitations imposed by our lack Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go! 15 of equipment it was good for training, and we were working long hours: up at six, train all day, have dinner, sit down for a couple of hours, and then, once it was fully dark, do a night navigation exercise, before going to bed at ten or eleven. Several of the guys had radios, and when the six o'clock news came on the BBC World Service, everyone would crowd round to listen. High-level diplomatic negotiations were going on in Geneva and elsewhere as world leaders struggled to avoid a confrontation, and from one night to the next the chances of war went up and down. For recreation, there was a school of card-players, and some people would read � anything from