Michael Asher (9 page)

might have been the habitation McNab mentions. Further west, past the houses, a graded track of some kind appeared to run parallel to the wadi we stood near. Ahmad pointed west, past the houses. 'That was where we stopped,' he said. 'On that track about five hundred metres from here. Rather than attack them, we thought the best bet was to surround them and cut off their escape, so we jumped out of the vehicles over there and spread out along the track. As we did that, they started shooting.' Remembering that McNab said the Iraqis had initiated the firefight as soon as the vehicles came to a halt � and bearing in mind that the SAS were short of ammunition � I quizzed him again over this. 'No, I'm certain it was them who opened fire,' he said. 'Our object was to cap�ture them, not to kill them.' `Were any of your men hit?' `No. No one was hit. They only fired a few shots and we fired back in a salvo. It went on for about ten minutes. They went silent and we thought we might have hit them, but we weren't sure so we didn't come straight across the wadi � we worked our way round the houses in a big cir�cle. When we got here, though, there was no one. They had got away.' I looked at the road to my right, recalling that McNab said they had crossed a road. Surely, I thought, with the bright moonlight and the place full of traffic, that would have been a big risk. Ahmad was reading my thoughts. 'I don't think they went across the road,' he said. 'I think they went through the culvert. They must have known that it led down to the Euphrates, and anyway, that's where we caught them eventually. But at the time we knew we'd lost them and we didn't follow. It was only later that we heard they'd been spotted by other people down by the river. And we threw a cordon round it.' I wondered about McNab's statement that he had seen the lights of Abu Kamal in Syria and since this was, according to Ahmad, the furthest Bravo Two Zero had got west on this side of the road, I asked him if it was possible to see Syria from any place near here. He shook his head. 'It's too fax away,' he said. 'More than ten kilometres. You can't see Abu Kamal from here.' I also quizzed Ahmad about S60s � had any gunners opened fire on the patrol? `There were air raids on that night,' he said. 'And the anti-aircraft batteries did fire at some aircraft going over, but not at the British commandos. That would have been stupid, anyway, because S60s fire explosive shells and it would have endangered the local people � there are plenty of houses here. No, they only fired at the enemy aircraft, I'm sure of that.' In this instance, Ryan backs up McNab's story that S60s opened up on them, no doubt repeating what McNab had said at the debriefing after the war, and says that in fact it was quite helpful for the patrol because it made the Iraqis believe an air raid was on and obliged them to keep their heads down. Could it be that McNab believed the AA guns were firing at his patrol, when in fact they had opened up on enemy aircraft instead? Ryan does, however, describe the second attempt at a hijacking which Ahmad had told me about, but which McNab does not mention. He says that the patrol made three successive attempts to stop cars, but that the drivers were roaring past 'like madmen'. CHAPTER thirteen AFTER THE POLICE HAD LOST THE SAS men by the road, Ahmad said, reports had come through that they had been spotted down by the Euphrates, and local citizens had been alerted and organized into groups to cordon off the area and prevent their escape. These were not part of any formal militia, he explained, just solid local people who felt it was their duty to help the police. Eater that night Ahmad had been with a group of policemen who had shot and cap�tured one of the British commandos. Since, as far as I knew, Mike Coburn was the only member of the patrol injured in the contacts that night, I assumed he was the one Ahmad was referring to. FOR WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SAS patrol after they had eluded the police that night, we have to rely on McNab's account. When they came under fire by the S60 battery, he says, the patrol crossed a road into a built-up area that led down to the banks of the Euphrates. Passing through the estate as silently as ghosts, they came across cultivation trails that led down to the river about 150 metres away. They holed up in a plantation, and McNab sent two men to fill all the water-bottles in the river, ready for a final push. When they returned, the five of them considered their options. They could withdraw to the east, lie up for the following day and have another crack at the border tomorrow night, or they could head north, crossing the river. They could press on west and make a final play for the border the same night as a patrol, or they could split up and every man take his chance. Pulling back to the east was out, they decided, because the area was too densely populated to hide in for another day. As for the river, it was in spate after the snow and rain, and its edges rimmed with ice: in their debilitated condition they would have lasted about ten minutes in the freezing waters, McNab reckoned. The only other option was to make a last-ditch attempt to reach Syria together that night. They started off, patrolling tactically in file, moving parallel with the Euphrates, seeing headlights streaming over a bridge in the distance. Soon they came across a deep wadi which seemed to curve round to the west, their direction of march. A good twenty-five metres deep, the wadi would protect them from view and, with any luck, would take them as far as the border. McNab left the others spaced out, lying as still as statues, and crawled over the lip of the wadi to recce it. On the opposite side he saw the silhou�ette of a sentry stamping his feet and, behind him, to his astonishment, what appeared to be an enemy command centre: tents, buildings, vehicles, radio antennae, and many soldiers. He made his way back to where Coburn was lying and the two turned to crawl back to the patrol, coming into a semi-crouch position as they made the nearest ditch. At that moment the sentries across the wadi spotted them, and all hell let loose. Coburn hit the deck and fired off bursts from his Minimi at any muzzle-flashes he could see. McNab blasted away with his last 203 grenades and ran, heading desperately back to the banks of the Euphrates, hearing the other three letting rip with their own Minimis and 203s, but not sure where they were. He and Coburn lay in the bushes on the riverbank about ten metres below the ploughed fields. Their backs were to the river, but there was no way they were going to attempt to cross it, McNab said. When four Iraqis came cautiously along the bank towards them, he and Coburn bumped them and legged it west across a ploughed field. From the road to the south there came the sound of yelling and blazing lights. McNab popped his head inquisitively through a hedgerow, only to find himself challenged by an Iraqi, whom Coburn shot to pieces with his Minimi. McNab blatted away with his rifle, covering Coburn as he scrambled through the hedge. They retreated fast, but the area was now buzzing with activity. It was about 0400 hours and only two hours of dark-ness remained. If they did not penetrate the Syrian frontier before first light, McNab knew, they were as good as finished. They shimmied over a six-foot-high chain-link fence and found themselves facing a massive convoy of vehicles: trucks, Land-Cruisers and armoured person�nel carriers, parked along a road. Half the Iraqi army, it must have felt like, had been assigned to kill or capture Bravo Two Zero that night. McNab spotted a five-metre gap between two trucks and they decided to make a dash through it. As they cleared another fence a soldier stuck his head out of a truck window. McNab shot him, then fired a burst into the back of the truck and lobbed an L2 grenade for good measure: 'the sounds of screaming filled the night' was the result. On the opposite side of the road they blasted away until they ran out of ammunition � which lasted 'all of five seconds', McNab says � then dropped their useless weapons and ran off across some garbage pits where small fires smouldered. As they did so, two AK47s opened up on them. Coburn was hit and went down, while McNab raced off to the right, believing that the Kiwi was dead. He was still confident, telling himself that he was now through the last contact and that there were only four kilometres to go. In normal circum�stances he could have run that in twenty minutes. WE DROVE BACK THROUGH Krabilah, taking a right turn down to the river through a patchwork of cul-tivated fields where pumps rattled and thumped turning iron wheels on antique fan-belts to irrigate the reddish earth. Ahmad told Abbas to stop by a muddy field lying on the banks of a wadi which curved east down towards the river. The wadi was a deep one; beyond it I could see the green heads of palms and eucalyptus lining the Euphrates. Ahmad showed me a ditch running along the verge between the road and the field, about a metre deep. 'This is where we were,' he said. 'There were seven or eight of us, all police. We had a couple of Land-Cruisers with us which were parked on the road. We had been alerted that the British commandos had been spotted in this area, and we were ready for them, here in the ditch Suddenly a man came crawling over the lip of the wadi towards us and we shouted at him to stop. He didn't so we opened fire. He was carrying only a bayonet, which he dropped when we started shooting. He screamed out something in English. I told the men to stop firing and I went over to him, followed by a few others. He was badly wounded in the foot and the arm, and blood was pouring out � he had sort of turned over on his side by the time we got there. We searched him to make sure he had no more weapons, then we lifted him up to take him to the vehicle. He was shivering from the cold and shock, and when he was in the Land-Cruiser I wrapped him in a blanket. He said, "Thank you," in English. `We took him straight to the hospital, where the doctor examined him and said he had lost a lot of blood and needed a transfusion. He asked for volunteers. I offered to give blood but I was the wrong blood group. Two of my companions also offered blood and one was accepted. He was given a transfusion and the doctor said it saved his life.' This was interesting because McNab says that Coburn was treated very differently on his way to captivity, stat�ing that the policemen in the vehicles roared with laughter every time the vehicle went over a bump, send�ing crippling pain through his wounded ankle In fact, McNab does not even mention that Coburn was taken to a hospital at all, and denies that he received medical treat�ment at all for his foot, which he says was just left to heal by itself. He says that the Kiwi was chained naked to a bed and left to rot, and that his, captors would regularly torture him by putting pressure on his wounds. I asked Ahmad if the prisoner had been mistreated on the way to the hospital. He shook his head. 'We had very strict orders not to molest prisoners,' he said. 'Not just these men, I mean, but any prisoners. Anyone � certainly anyone who was not an officer � would have got into big trouble if he had touched them without permission. And this man was seriously wounded � he would have died without a transfusion. Of course, I can't say what hap�pened when he left the hospital, but I know he got the best treatment there.' I recalled the story of an SAS warrant officer who had been captured by the Iraqis in a separate operation in the Gulf War. His leg had been badly smashed up by gunshot wounds, but he had been operated on by a British-trained Iraqi surgeon, who had done such a brilliant job on his leg that when he was repatriated he had needed no fur�ther treatment. Ahmad's story of offering blood, and the doctor's anxiousness to save Coburn's life seemed to be consistent with that, and all the little details � the blanket, the way he was lifted by the police � seemed to ring true. That he was taken to a hospital and given a transfusion was confirmed that night by a man named Zayid, who had been a medical orderly at the hospital on 26 January 1991, and who was introduced to me by al-Haj Nur ad-Din, the teashop-owner who had found me Ahmad. 'It's true he was given a transfusion,' Zayid said. 'And he wasn't mistreated, although I did accuse him of being an Israeli, and he got very angry about that, saying, "No! No! English! English!" But no one beat him up or any�thing. Why would they?' `You might have been angry about the people he and his comrades had killed and injured � your own people.' Zayid looked at me in surprise. 'But no one was killed,' he said, 'and if anyone had been injured they would have been brought to the hospital and I would have known. The only one brought to the hospital was this man.' I asked Ahmad if he could verify this. 'There was no one killed that night,' he confirmed. 'There wasn't anyone injured � nothing. I was at the hospital too, so I also would have known if anyone else had been hurt. The Englishman was the only one injured � one of the commandos was killed, of course, but there were none of our men in the hospital. This is a small place and I knew all the policemen who were on duty that night. I can tell you that not one Iraqi was killed or injured by the commandos, and you can ask anyone you like.' I actually went about in my spare moments over the next two days doing just that. Though almost everyone who had been here ten years previously appeared to know about Bravo Two Zero and the gun-battle, no one recalled any Iraqis having been shot. THAT NIGHT I THOUGHT OVER WHAT Ahmad and the others had told me. I was reluctant to believe that McNab and his men hadn't caused any casualties at all, but again, what would be the profit in the Iraqis lying about it? After all, if your house gets broken into by a burglar who takes your priceless stamp collection, there is little to be gained by claiming that nothing is missing. If this was a propaganda ploy, then surely it had misfired it would clearly have been to the Iraqis' advantage to maintain that Bravo Two Zero had killed even more than they had, in order to justify some of Saddam Hussein's excesses during the war, and certainly they had taken every opportunity to gain the world's sympathy by publi�cizing the deaths of Iraqi civilians and children in the Amiriya Bunker in Baghdad. McNab says in his book that intelligence sources revealed later that his eight-man patrol had accounted for at least 250 Iraqi casualties during their operation, which, for McNab's group, lasted from 22 January to 27 January. In effect, though, the active period ran only between 1600 hours on 24 January and the early hours of 27 January �less than three
days. Apart from the alleged shoot-out at the VCP, the only major contacts McNab relates are the firelight near Abbas's farm and the series of gun-battles here in Krabilah between sunset on 26 January and sun�rise the following morning. I tried to apply some simple addition to the process. At the 'Abbas shoot-out' McNab claimed fifteen were killed and many more wounded, so for the sake of argument I assumed that the total count was about forty-five. There were also the three guards at the checkpoint to take into consideration � a theoretical total of forty-eight. Even if these contacts happened just as McNab describes them, and bearing in mind that all the evidence from eyewit�nesses suggested that there were no Iraqi casualties during either incident, the number of deaths still only amounted to about a fifth of the total McNab stated. That meant that in the final encounter at Krabilah � less, of course, anyone Ryan and his group accounted for independently � the SAS must have taken out up to two hundred men. Ryan stated that Consiglio himself came up against twelve men in his contact, so assuming that he hit them all � though there is no evidence that he hit any � that still left about 188 bodies unaccounted for. What troubled me most, though, was the question of ammunition. McNab constantly emphasized how little the patrol had. Half of the original amount had been used up in the initial firefight, and after the second con�tact on 26 January, he himself had about one and a half magazines left and Coburn a hundred rounds of link for the Minimi, a total of about a hundred and forty-five rounds between them. Legs and Dinger had thirty rounds of link for the machine-gun and one magazine � sixty rounds in all. No one knows how many rounds Bob Consiglio had, but let us average it out at fifty: that makes a sum total of about 250 rounds for the whole patrol. Although the SAS may be good shots, even the best marksman in the world cannot hit a target every round in a combat situation. A hit every ten shots is a pretty good average, but the idea that the patrol, weak, exhausted, under extreme pressure and fighting at night, could have hit an Iraqi every 1.25 shots beggars belief. Peter Ratcliffe, for one, has challenged the claim. This veteran of twenty-five years' experience with the Regiment has pointed out that, according to current military theory, it would take a battalion of 500 to destroy an enemy com�pany of one hundred, and at least 1250 men to take out 250. 'Actually,' Ratcliffe added wryly, 'it is a great pity that McNab was captured and Ryan escaped, because otherwise � at the rate they were killing Iraqis � the war might have been over in a week.' CHAPTER fourteen THE CONTACT WITH THE SENTRIES at McNab's `command centre' was the point at which the patrol finally fragmented into three: McNab and Coburn, Dinger and Lane, and Consiglio. I had accounted for the capture of one of them � Coburn � and now I began to look for eyewitnesses who could tell me about the others. Al-Haj Nur ad-Din, the engineer turned teashop-owner, told me that he knew of at least two men who had been involved in the capture of one of the British commandos on Rummani, an island in the Euphrates facing Krabilah. This immediately rang true, because I knew that Lane and Dinger had swum across the Euphrates to an island, unnamed in either Ryan's or McNab's texts, where they had taken refuge in a pump-house. Nur ad-Din said that he knew the actual pump-house involved and offered to take me across to Rummani and show it to me. SINCE DINGER HAS PRODUCED NO public record of the events of that night, we have to rely once again on Ryan and McNab. After the contact at the deep wadi, McNab says, Dinger and Legs, now separated from the others, realized that they could never fight their way through with their limited ammunition. Although they had previously rejected the idea of crossing the river, it was now their only option. At the water's edge they tried, with no success, to unchain a small boat, so instead they launched themselves into the icy waters of the Euphrates. The water was so cold it took their breath away, but they swam about a hundred metres across to a sand spit, where they lay quaking and gasping for a long time. The only way off the spit was past a pontoon bridge, about 250 metres to their west, on which they could see a roadblock. From the south bank there came sporadic fir�ing and the play of flashlights on the water. Their camouflage suits were already freezing on them, and if they remained where they were, they would soon be dead. There was no choice but to try and breast the main river, which was about five hundred metres across. They found a polystyrene box, which they broke up and stuffed into their smocks, then they waded out into the water and started to swim. The cold sapped their energy, and they let their weapons slip out of their hands. By the time they touched bottom on the other side, they had been carried a kilometre and a half downstream, and Legs was inca�pable of wading ashore. Dinger found a small pump-house on the bank and dragged his friend into it. He began to heat some water with his last Hexamine block, but it was too late � Legs was no longer compos mentis and he knocked the mug of steaming liquid aside. At first light, Dinger pulled his comrade into the sun-light. The fields by the river were already full of Fellahin, the sedentary peasants of the Euphrates and Tigris val-leys, and according to both Ryan and McNab, Dinger deliberately surrendered to one of them, who locked them in the hut. When the man ran off to tell others, Dinger broke out and made off, only to run into a big gang of local people, who surrounded him, knocked him down and tied him up. One of the men pulled a knife and threatened to cut off his ear, but at this point Dinger brought out his gold sovereigns, which the crowd fought over. He was rescued from them by a group of soldiers, who had evidently, McNab said, had orders to capture him alive. He was taken across the river in a convoy and delivered to a camp, where he was severely beaten. While he was there, Legs was brought in on a stretcher and put into an ambulance. He was completely motionless, and Dinger feared that his comrade was dead. That was the last he ever saw of him. This must be the account Dinger gave at the debrief afterwards, for Ryan's version is virtually identical, except for a few details � significantly, in view of what Ahmad had told me, that it was the police rather than the army who took him away, and a police station rather than a camp in which he last saw Legs. NUR AD-DIN GUIDED ME THROUGH the streets of Krabilah, turning off on a road which led down to the pontoon bridge which is mentioned at least twice in McNab's account. Slightly east of the bridge was a landing-place where several ancient and battered-looking boats were moored, and I wondered if it was one of these same vessels that Dinger and Legs had tried to cut loose that night. Standing at the water's edge, I saw that the bridge was about 250 metres west of the landing-place. At first I concluded that this must have been where they set off from, but when Nur ad-Din reminded me that the river had been much higher in January 1991, I guessed that the landing-place itself must have been the spit of land on which they had lain freezing in the darkness. Ahmad told me that a weapon, still loaded, had been recovered from the river the day after the incident, a little downstream from here, confirming that the SAS men had indeed let go of their firearms. I was later able to see that weapon � a Minimi light machine-gun � in Baghdad. After a great deal of bargaining, we managed to hire a steel canoe from one of the friendly but dishevelled boat�men at the landing-place, and pushed off downstream towards Rummani. The Euphrates bore little resem�blance to the fearsome torrent it must have been in January 1991. It was deep blue and utterly tranquil, bor�dered by lush thickets of phragmites reeds and tussocks of halfa grass, where egrets and herons roosted and pied kingfishers hovered. The current was strong and I could feel the water pulling at the vessel as the boatman fought to swing it round towards the shore of Rummani. Suddenly Nur ad-Din pointed to a squat cabin of grey breeze-blocks standing a good fifty metres from the shore-line on a rise among clumps of high bushes. 'That's it!' he told me. 'That's the place.' The boatman looped around, surfing the current, and brought us in to the swampy shore. In January 1991, of course, the waterline would have been much higher and nearer to the cabin. It was only a few minutes' walk to the hut, a crudely built structure with a gaping hole in the wall through which I could see a greasy pump-engine �now silent � attached to a pipe that obviously fed water into a catch-basin outside, from where it was chanelled to fields of wheat and apricot orchards beyond. There was a thin steel door at the back and I entered, crouching on the oil-saturated floor to spend a few minutes in silent medi�tation for Steven Lane, a courageous British soldier who had spent his last hours here. I knew I must be the first of Lane's own tribe to visit the place since his death. There was no one about, but Nur ad-Din led me across a field of golden wheat to an orchard, where children began to gather excitedly round us, showing us a gigantic � and poisonous � green snake they had just killed. We asked if there were any adults around and eventually a thickset old man appeared, a tremendously powerful-looking individual in a ragged dishdasha and knotted shamagh. I told him that I was interested in the British soldiers who had hidden in the pump-house ten years ago and he nodded vigorously. 'I remember that morning,' he said. 'I was with some others and we saw a foreigner lurk�ing in the bushes. Someone fired a shot over his head and he gave himself up. He was unarmed except for a knife �I think he had some grenades with him � and we tied his arms behind his back and took him off to the police head-quarters in Krabilah on a tractor.' `Was he beaten up?' I asked. `No, not at all. We pushed him down on his knees, tied him and searched him for weapons � he was carrying a bayonet and two grenades. But nobody touched him apart from that.' `Did anyone threaten to cut off his ear?' `No, of course not.' Did he give you any gold?' `I know nothing about gold.' `What about the other man � the one in the pump-house?' `He was dying of cold when they found him. He was still alive when they took him away, though.' I cross-questioned the old man, whose name was Mohammed, carefully over the next hour, but he stuck resolutely to his story, that Dinger had not been beaten by his captors. In the end I was satisfied he was telling the truth about this, although I wasn't certain about the gold sovereigns � he shifted niftily away from the subject whenever I came back to it Finally, I asked him if he would swear by God that Dinger was not beaten. The great British Arabist Gertrude Bell wrote that the Fellahin of Iraq traditionally placed great store in oaths by God, which were considered blasphemy if the swearer were not telling the truth. 'All who hear the oath,' she wrote, 'know beyond question that if the speaker is foresworn, his temerity will bring upon him within the year a judgement greater and more inexorable than that of man.' Mohammed swore quite readily in front of the large crowd that had collected around us. When I had finished the interview, he brought me a huge dish of fresh apricots. I stayed on Rummani until the evening, reluctant to return to the noise and dust of Krabilah. It felt like a world left behind by the modern age, a small enclave of tradition, a haven of peace. For the Fellahin who lived here � the settled, farming tribes of the Euphrates � life cannot have changed much since Babylonian times. They live in the same mud-built houses, use the same tools and live by much the same laws as they did in the days of Hammurabi. The influence of the rivers � the Tigris and the Euphrates � is dominant in the lives of these peasants, and throughout the millennia they have been exposed to the incursions of invaders from the deserts. Their history is one of unending struggle against nature and against outsiders � to them, with six thousand years' uninter�rupted existence along this shore, the SAS must have been no more than just another bunch of 'barbarian invaders'. I sat by the pump-house until the sun turned the sky transparent gold and the blue waters of the river became oil-black, watching fishing smacks drifting lazily on the current and kingfishers hovering and diving. By evening, a considerable number of Fellahin had collected, anxious to find out what was happening, and many of them appeared to know the story of Legs and Dinger. It had become a local legend � even children who weren't born then had heard the tale. I found one young man, Farraj, a solid-looking, articulate youth of about twenty, who told me he had been with the men who had captured Dinger, and had seen Legs in the pump-house. 'I was only a boy then,' he said. Tut I remember it like yesterday. It was mid-morning, I think, when they spotted this man in the fields wearing camouflage, and someone fired over his head with an AK47. He stopped at once and put his hands up and we surrounded him and tied his hands behind his back. He didn't try to fight, and he wasn't car�rying any weapons, except maybe a knife � or a bayonet � and some grenades. There were no policemen involved. We put him on a tractor and took him across the river to the police station � it had to be a tractor because it was the only vehicle that could cross the ford.' `Were the men here already looking for him? Did they know the hunt was on for these commandos?' `No, we only knew about it afterwards.' `Then how come someone was walking around with an AK47?' `Everyone here has weapons � it's illegal, but nobody bothers. When they spotted the man someone just went into his house and got his rifle.' Tut didn't you hear a lot of firing the previous night?' `No, nothing.' `Was the man beaten up when he was captured?' `Not at all. They forced him down on his knees and tied his hands, but nothing more.' `What about the other commando � the one in the pump-house?' `I was with the group who went to get him and I saw him lying in the hut. He was in a bad way, you could tell, and his eyes were totally lifeless. The men I was with car- tied him out of the but and lit a fire, hoping that it would save him, but he cringed away from the flames, probably thinking they meant to burn him. He was put on a stretcher and taken across the river, but I am sure he was still alive at that time.' CHAPTER fifteen LIKE THE ARMY OF ANCIENT SPARTA, an SAS patrol is built on a complement of pairs � the