Harry Flashman and the Invasion of Iraq Page 8

  An hour or so after the QM left me, I spotted a dust-covered Mitsubishi 4x4 entering the camp, which heralded the arrival of the combat camera team. I strode over to greet them and was surprised to discover that the two-man team consisted of a Royal Marine corporal and a Royal Navy lieutenant. Neither of them had served with 42 before so they were as new to the set-up as I was. I explained the accommodation problem and pointed to the scruffy canvas bag still lying in the sand where the QM had dropped it. Neither of them seemed remotely perturbed by the situation and with barely a word they started unravelling the canvas bundle. I pitched in and in a matter of minutes we had a slightly wobbly aluminium frame assembled, over which the heavy canvas outer needed to be dragged. This done, we hammered dozens of steel pegs deep into the loose sand, in the hope of giving the thing some stability in the event of the wind picking up. I dragged my bergen and kitbag inside and they emptied the contents of their 4x4 into our new home. Next stop was a much-needed cup of tea over which I was able to impart most of my new-found knowledge of what life was like in the Commando. When I mentioned the food, my Navy roommate just laughed and gestured towards the Mitsubishi parked outside. “I wouldn’t worry too much about that,” he said. “Camp Doha isn’t so far away and the wheels are ours for the foreseeable.” It was music to my ears. I had only been in this dusty hellhole a matter of hours, and already we had an escape vehicle. My spirits soared. By early evening we had arranged the inside of the tent to resemble something like a home. Camp beds were erected, we had purloined a couple of folding chairs, and the combat camera chaps had produced their piece-de-resistance, a roll of carpet which did a neat job of stopping sand getting kicked into all our kit. Or at least, it slowed down the process.

  As the sun dipped towards the western horizon, we joined the throng of officers heading for the CO’s evening briefing. The headquarters tent was jammed with bodies, with only enough seating for the first dozen or so. The remainder perched uncomfortably atop storage boxes and trestle tables, or stood in the corners of the tent on either side of the doorway. It was pretty phenomenal to realise just how many officers there now were in the unit, and gave a good idea of how much the Commando had grown from its peacetime complement. The CO kicked off proceedings by introducing the day’s new arrivals to the assembly, myself included, before asking his various branch officers to give a series of successive briefs on the issues of the day. The evening briefings would follow the same format almost every day for the ensuing months; the points were always delivered in the same order: manning, intelligence, all the operational issues (including any news on the armoured front, which was my part of the show), kit and equipment, signals, and on and on until every aspect of life in the battle group had been covered. On relatively quiet days in the buildup to war, the briefings would last around an hour; on busy days they were well over two. Personally I saw no gain in dragging out the proceedings so I tended to offer a “no comments” line when it came to armoured warfare. Besides which I had typically done no work and had little idea what the Division’s armoured assets were up to. But almost everyone else in the battle group was seemingly embroiled in an endless quest for perfection, so the briefings got longer and longer as the war got closer. If the effectiveness of the troops is reflected in the attention to detail of their officers then God help the Iraqi army, I thought to myself, the poor buggers will be slaughtered in droves. I should have known better than to allow myself such optimistic thoughts.

  The daily routine in Camp Gibraltar followed such a repetitive format that the days swiftly blurred into one another. Mornings dawned bright and chilly and the day’s activity began with a swift trot to the shower block. I chose to rise early simply to ensure that I could enjoy a long, hot shower before the limited supply of hot water ran out. Since there was essentially only enough hot water for around half the men in the camp, the shower blocks were festooned with notices beseeching us to take minimally short showers and thereby conserve the limited supply. Well bugger that, thinks I, a hot shower is one of the few luxuries attainable in this joint, so I jolly well made the most of it, royally soaking myself each morning and getting rid of the sand and grit that had inevitably glued itself to me during the night. Ablutions were followed by a visit to the dining tent and breakfast, which was undoubtedly the lowest-quality meal of the day, consisting largely of grey scrambled eggs and disgustingly shrivelled sausages of unknown origin, widely suspected of being made from camel meat. Much of what was on offer I would ignore, but at least there was coffee in abundance. Breakfast over, the rest of the morning would be taken up by a trip to Brigade Headquarters, transport permitting, or, if I was feeling in more of a social mood, I would wander through the camp to the QDG lines and enjoy putting the world to rights with the squadron officers. By the time I joined them for a cup of tea, usually taken away from prying eyes under a series of camouflage nets strung out from the recce vehicles, the camp would be awash with Marines undertaking training of all kinds. Squads of men could be seen scurrying around the camp brandishing weaponry of all kinds, assembling radio masts, practising grenade throwing, planting dummy Claymore mines,(11) running through drills on their anti-tank rockets, setting up machine-gun nests, etc. etc. The place was a veritable hive of activity and, after a couple of months of this routine, I had little doubt that every man in the Commando was more than proficient with every item of equipment. My cavalry colleagues took a slightly more sanguine view of proceedings and, as long as their vehicles were in good condition and they were confident in their skills, the pace of life was usually a little less frenetic than that of their Royal Marines colleagues. By lunchtime the desert sun would be baking the sand once again and as the temperature soared the pace of activity declined accordingly. Lunch, in the form of MREs, would be taken sitting on camp chairs outside the accommodation tents, usually wearing little more than a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. A hardcore element of the Marines would ditch their T-shirts and eat lunch prone on their camp beds in a seemingly endless quest to get an ever deeper tan. Afternoons consisted largely of physical exertion of one kind or another, something which I successfully managed to avoid throughout the deployment. Squads of them would double around the camp in full battle kit, being overtaken only by their fellow Marines who chose to run in shorts and T-shirts. A shipping container full of weights and rowing machines had been brought over from the UK, and this provided a rudimentary gym, which was permanently overcrowded. Following hours of exercise, late afternoons were designated as admin-time, in which the chaps could do whatever needed doing to keep them and their equipment in full working order. To a large extent this consisted of a growing obsession with spray painting everything desert yellow. With the exception of their rifles, which they weren’t allowed to deface, the Marines’ equipment changed colour in its entirety. Webbing, bergens, vehicles, radios, jerrycans and carry-cases of all kinds all received liberal spray-gun treatment. Over a period of weeks, the entirety of 42 Commando’s equipment metamorphosed from dark green to yellow/brown. But the time could equally be spent exchanging broken or damaged items of kit, cleaning weapons, and doing the thousand and one little jobs that keep a man and his equipment in good working order. Admin completed, the evening briefings would begin, followed by dinner which, in my case at least, often meant a jaunt to Camp Doha with the combat camera team, since the food at Camp Gibraltar was consistently revolting and best avoided. Then back into our shabby green tent for bed and a fitful night’s sleep, before the whole daily cycle would begin again the following morning. Despite the indefatigable cheerfulness of the Marines I found it a dismal, repetitive existence and any little break from the routine was cherished.

  After a couple of weeks of workaday life in the camp, the Operations Office announced at an evening briefing that the unit would shortly begin rehearsals for the helicopter assault that would eventually land us in southern Iraq. This was a significant step forward in the run-up to war and there was an immediate buzz of excitement among the officers present at
the briefing. The repetitive routine of camp life had started to take its inevitable effect on morale and it would, according to the company commanders, be much easier to motivate the men in the knowledge that action was drawing nearer. I was in two minds about this development. On one hand, any break from the daily grind would doubtless be a good thing. But on the other, rehearsals for an assault meant that the real thing was getting a lot closer, and that was disconcerting news in the extreme, made worse by the discovery that we were to be flown into Iraq by the US Marines. Their fleet of helicopters was decrepit - many of them had been commissioned in the early 1970s and had seen service in Vietnam - and I suspected the quality of their pilots would match the aircraft. The British helicopter effort had, it seemed, been devoted to 40 Commando, so we were stuck with the Yanks. Rehearsals were due to start in a couple of days and would begin with company-sized daylight lifts, and progress to multiple-company lifts at night. The next announcement from the Ops Officer was the load plan, which was essentially a list of who would fly in each wave of helicopters and where they would land. The first wave was unsurprising, consisting largely of lunatics from Brigade Recce Force, forward air controllers, artillery spotters, and other Special Forces types. Then came a much bigger wave of assault troops, led by the men of J Company augmented by snipers and the Unit Manoeuvre Support Group.(12) No surprise there either -until the other augmentees were added to the list. I practically fell of my chair in shock when I heard my name included, and managed to splutter out a protest before the list continued further.

  “Good God, lead assault wave, are you sure?” I croaked.

  “Don’t be so bloody modest, Harry,” came the response from the CO. “You’ll be in the thick of it, and for very good reason. QDG will be coming ashore by landing craft at the same time as the helicopters land, and we need some educated eyes on the ground to tell them which way to go. If you stop and think about it, it’s absolutely necessary.” Murmurs of consent filled the room and I felt bile rising in my throat as fear gripped my innards. I nodded weakly in agreement and slumped back into my chair, stomach churning, unable to pay attention to the remainder of the load plan, which in any case was irrelevant to me.

  The start of the rehearsals was marked by the beating of rotors overhead, and the arrival of numerous American transport helicopters, all painted battleship grey and bearing the stencil “Marines” along the side. Their landing was marked by clouds of dust and sand being kicked up into the air, obscuring the landing site and the other approaching helicopters, many of which were forced to circle until the dust had settled and they could see their approach more clearly. Once they had landed outside the camp, we were formed up into sticks of 8, 16 or 32 men depending on what type of helicopter we were flying in, and marched out beyond the perimeter to a series of forming-up points marked by light sticks and sandbags. The American air crews disembarked and some of them strolled over to meet their passengers. I was curious to meet these fellows, particularly now that my wellbeing depended on their piloting skills, so I made sure I was in the path of an approaching pair.

  “Pleased to meet you Sir,” grinned the pilot in a southern drawl, arm outstretched. I shook his hand as if my life depended on it, which I suppose it did to some extent. “Captain Chester O’Grady, U-nited States Marine Corps, at your service.”

  “Captain Harry Flashman, Queen’s Royal Hussars,” I responded. “Delighted to meet you.”

  “Hussars?” he asked quizzically. “I thought we was flying in the Royal Marines.”

  “And indeed you are,” I reassured him quickly. “I am simply attached to them at the moment.”

  “So you’re not a Marine?” he asked. Clearly I had just plummeted in his estimation.

  “I’m a cavalry officer,” I retorted, more than a little miffed at his reaction.

  “Whatever. As long as you’re prepared to climb onboard, we’re prepared to git you to I-raq.”

  I detected a note of self-doubt in his voice which prompted some questioning. “You sound as if I shouldn’t climb aboard?”

  “Nah, you’ll be fine with us. S’just we don’t have a lot of rotor hours right now, so some a’ these crews, well, we’re a little rusty just at the moment.”

  The alarm bells were jangling loudly now. Was this man really telling me he wasn’t confident flying a helicopter? “When you say ‘rusty’, what exactly do you mean?” I asked him.

  “Well we’re a reservist company, and most of us only got out here a few weeks back. It takes a little time to get used to flying these old birds agin, I can tell ya.”

  “You mean, you don’t fly these helicopters all the time?”

  “Hell no!” He was warming to his theme now. “I fly 737s for United outta Houston, Texas. Of course, I’m qualified to fly choppers too, but I only do that a few times a year to keep up ma qualification, y’unnerstand?”

  I understood all right. This man and his colleagues were sham amateurs, airline pilots who had made the mistake of joining the US Marine Corps Reserves and had now been rounded up to fly helicopters into a battle zone. Their commercial flying skills were no doubt laudable, as long as there was an autopilot to do the difficult bits like taking off and landing. But they had probably never flown in a big formation before and had very little experience of flying in the desert or, for that matter, at night. I realised now why the rehearsals were starting in the day before we made the transition to darkness; it had nothing to do with familiarising the embarked troops and everything to do with getting the pilots some much-needed practise. I could barely conceal my disgust for this loathsome creature whose transparent lack of flying ability was jeopardising my very existence, so I strode quickly away to rejoin the rest of my stick before I said or did anything rash.

  We eventually boarded our respective helicopters half an hour later, little snakes of men trudging through the sand towards the aging behemoths that sat on the landing site, rotors drooping idly. Most of the helicopters were the inappropriately named Super Stallions, a big lump of a thing manufactured by Sikorsky, vaguely similar to the “jolly green giant” of Vietnam fame. Other than size there was nothing super about them, unless the description referred to the age of the airframes or the dirty streaks of corrosion along their flanks. Fortunately our captain was someone other than Chester O’Grady, although I had little doubt that he too would be a reservist rather than a full-time helicopter pilot. We were herded inside in two rows and sat astride our daypacks, rifles gripped between our knees. It was cramped and crowded and I wondered whether it would even be possible to get everyone inside once we were carrying our full battle equipment. We sat in a sweaty silence for a few minutes before the turbines began whining and through the open rear door I could see the huge rotor blades begin to turn in a lazy circle. I stuffed a pair of foam hearing protectors into my ears as the din steadily rose and the aircraft began to shake from side to side - a sensation unlike any other helicopter I have flown in, and quite unnerving. Eventually the rotors reached the required speed and sand was kicked up in enormous volumes as we rose into the desert sky. Peering through a dust-covered window I could see another Super Stallion flying about 200 yards off to our port side and I assumed there was one to our starboard as well. The pilot flew us around in a large oblong, eventually returning to the landing site some 20 minutes later. We sat in silence until the turbines stopped and the rotors ceased turning, then quietly shuffled out blinking into the bright sunshine, relieved that everything had passed off without a hitch. Follow-on rehearsals were scheduled for the following day, and this time we would embark and disembark with the rotors still turning; there was much more scope for errors and, judging by the subdued nature of the troops, everybody knew it.

  The second set of rehearsals began with the same sticks of men being walked out into the desert, but this time they formed into huddles, lying on top of their equipment and weapons to stop anything being blown away by the downdraught from the rotors as the huge helicopters came down right next to us. At
least, that was the plan. We formed up in a huddle, this time sporting skiing goggles to keep the sand out of our eyes, as well as the ubiquitous ear protectors. The vast, grey bulk of a Super Stallion appeared in the sky above us, but failed to stay in a hover and began to creep towards us as it descended. I looked up at the animated face of the loadmaster, who was hanging out of the side door, shouting into a microphone to help guide the pilot in his descent. His shouts of instruction were in vain though, as the roaring beast dropped ever closer to us. At the eleventh hour I realised with abject horror that the pilot would miss his landing spot altogether and was destined to land directly on top of the group of men huddled underneath him. The danger was spotted by the Marines as well and our tight-knit group dissolved in a second, every man for himself as we scrambled to get away from the descending bulk of the helicopter. I vaulted over the pile of kit and sprinted into the desert as fast as my legs would carry me, brushing aside a couple of Marines who, in my opinion, were not moving nearly quickly enough. Propelled by the downdraught I ran quicker than ever, glancing back over my shoulder to witness the pilot achieve an absolute bull’s-eye, landing squarely on top of the equipment we had abandoned just a few seconds earlier. Daypacks and other items of equipment flew past us as the wind blasted them into the desert. I came to rest, chest heaving, around 50 yards away, sobbing with relief that I was still in one piece, face down in the dirt to shield myself from the stinging sand grains that were still being blasted out by the spinning rotor blades. Face buried in the sand I lay still, cursing the incompetence of the American pilots, the British planners who had agreed to use US helicopters, and the nightmarish series of events that had landed me in the position of having to fly with them. Eventually I became aware that the din from the Super Stallion had died away so I picked myself up, shook the sand from my smock, and walked back towards the gaggle of Marines that had regrouped next to the helicopter.