tree trunk, which was bleached white in the sun. It made the perfect platform from which to take a dive. The river was deep enough, and marvellously refreshing.
A couple of young 2 MERCIAN lads chose to come with us. Sticky stood guard while we larked around diving off the log, and holding on to it with the current roaring past. I noticed the 2 MERCIAN lads having a whisper and a giggle, and then they disappeared upstream. A few minutes later Throp saw something floating down towards us. It looked like a stick. He went to grab it, so we could chuck it around a bit.
‘Oh shit!’ he yelled. ‘It’s a shit! Literally it is!’
Throp had grabbed hold of what turned out to be a massive man-log.
‘You’re fucking joking!’ I yelled. ‘It’s a human land-mine!’
Throp and I were laughing so much we were half-drowning. Up on the riverbank Sticky was killing himself. But Chris wasn’t amused. In fact, he had a massive arse on. He stormed out of the river and started yelling in the direction of the 2 MERCIAN lads.
‘You fuckers! Fucking get here!’
He was a captain and they were ranks, so they pretty much came running.
‘You fuckers!’ he roared at them. ‘You just did a shit towards us!’
‘We didn’t do it, sir!’ one of the lads protested.
‘It wasn’t us!’ said the other lad.
You could tell in an instant that they were lying, and Throp, Sticky and I were doubled up. The more Chris lost it, the funnier it became. Eventually, he threatened to put the two lads on a charge. It was priceless.
‘What are you going to charge them with?’ I gasped. ‘Defecating in a forbidden position? Or defecation of duty?’
Later, back at Monkey One Echo, the guilty party came to have a quiet word with me. He was looking a bit sheepish.
‘Erm… about what happened in the river…’ he began.
‘Shut up, man,’ I cut in. ‘It was class.’
He grinned. ‘It was me who did the turd. But don’t tell Chris, eh?’
I promised him that I wouldn’t. Just as soon as I saw Chris, I told him who it was had laid the log in the river.
‘So mate, what d’you reckon you’re going to charge him with?’ I needled him.
Chris had calmed down a bit by now. He had to laugh. After all, what was a little shit between blokes, when soon we’d be fighting back-to-back to save each other’s lives?
When it all went noisy the only place to get eyes on the Green Zone was sat atop the old boy’s back wall. From there I could see everything, but I was also a bullet magnet. As the rounds went flying everyone was running for body armour and helmet, whilst I was getting a leg-up from Sticky on to the wall. The 2 MERCIAN lads would be staring at me like I was insane. To be honest, I never used to think about getting shot. If I did, I knew I’d never go up there. And it was the only place where I could see the battlefield, to talk in the air.
With the enemy chatter buzzing that they were poised to attack, the OC decided to push a patrol down to Alpha Xray. He wanted to check on the platoon in the Alamo, and to recce around their position. We formed up with the lads from Monkey One Echo, in a convoy of WMIK and Snatch Land Rovers, with Throp and me on a quad bike.
The quad was a beast of a thing, with four knobbly wheels like mini-tractor tyres. It was mostly for Sergent Major Peach to use, as a fast and manoeuvrable ammo resupply and casualty evacuation vehicle. I’m a bit of a petrol-head, and no way was I letting Throp drive. I stuck him on the pillion and grabbed the controls.
We left Monkey One Echo at 0900 and were out patrolling the Green Zone for four hours. The OC hoped to provoke the enemy into showing their hand. We were frustrated and bored and dying to get a reaction, but there was nothing. By the time we turned up the dirt track that led back to our base, not a shot had been fired at us.
Halfway up the hill I pulled a massive wheelie, without warning Throp. In an instant I had the beast rearing up on its back wheels, with Throp screaming that he was falling off. I held it like that for several seconds and then slammed it back down again, by which time the two of us were laughing our tits off. But not for long.
I glanced ahead to check for the convoy, and realised that we’d lost them. At that very moment the enemy opened up. There was an ear-splitting burst of gunfire, and the first rounds slammed into the vegetation barely metres behind us. I twisted the throttle with sweating hand, giving it maximum revs, and went flying up the track like a bolt from hell. I reckoned the convoy had to be just ahead of us.
As we bucked and weaved our way through the trees, more and more weapons were opening fire. Bullets hammered into the dirt throwing rocks and shit all over us. Over the roar of the quad’s engine I could hear something horribly big hammering away — thud-thud-thud-thud-thud — the rounds from which were chewing up the bush. It sounded like a Dushka, and it was absolutely fucking terrifying. A Dushka round would take your head clean off, or rip your arm or leg from your body. All it would take was one 12.7mm bullet tearing into the quad, and it’d be smashed to pieces. Or a round in the petrol tank, and Throp and I would be nicely torched.
Our only hope lay in speed. It takes great skill to shoot and hit a man sprinting at speed, or two lunatics on a careering quad bike. I drove the race of my life, throwing the machine from side to side and cannoning off the banks to either edge of the track, and flying over ruts and bumps, ducking branches and vines as we went.
We slewed around a blind corner, and up ahead were the vehicles. I gave it one final blip of throttle, caught up with the rear WMIK, and grabbed one of the vehicle’s handrails. We had them tow us into Monkey One Echo, under the safety of their 50-cals and Gimpys. I powered down the quad and sat astride her for a second, my whole body shaking. Whether it was from nerves or the bone-rattling ride I wasn’t sure. I’d been shitting myself out there. As for Throp, he looked as white as a bloody sheet.
Now we knew just how closely the enemy were watching us, and how many of the fuckers were out there. The moment they’d got us on our own, they’d unleashed a storm of lead on us.
It promised to be some shitfight, whenever it might come.
Sixteen
THE SIEGE OF ALPHA XRAY
We moved up to PB Sandford using Route Buzzard, a dirt track that led along the ridge line. Accommodation here was five-star, compared to where we’d just been. Sticky and I grabbed our own room, in what must have been the camel or donkey house.
There was the one arched doorway with no door, a dirt floor, and a couple of mud-sculpted feeding troughs for whatever animals had once lived here. I managed to scrounge a camp bed, which was sheer luxury. Sticky cobbled together a bed of sorts from an old frame made of branches and strung with paracord for a mattress. It was a stickyback-plastic-and-cardboard-box kind of bed, and Sticky bitched a lot ’cause I had a real camp bed. I told him that I had a camp bed because I was the JTAC, and the JTAC needed a good night’s kip. As it happened, it was too hot to sleep in that room during the day, and too stuffy at night. We’d have been better off dossing down outside.
The roof above was a dome of smooth mud plaster, and the topside became my new JTAC position. Being domed, it provided an all-around view south over the Green Zone, and north over the desert. It was perfect for controlling warplanes, but provided zero cover from enemy fire.
Along with the move to PB Sandford, we’d picked up a fifth member of the FST. Bombardier Karl ‘Jess’ Jessop was going to be Chris’s right-hand man, cueing up the field guns, and leaving Chris free to keep an overview of FST operations.
Chris played hockey for England, and Sticky, Throp and I were always winding him up about it.
‘Hockey — that’s a girls’ sport, isn’t it?’
‘No it’s not,’ Chris would argue. ‘It’s for real men.’
It turned out that Jess was also a keen hockey player, so we reckoned the two of them were made for each other. But it soon became clear that there was this love-hate thing between them. Maybe it was about who was the better hockey player? Fuck knows. Either way, the rest of us were determined to get some good mileage out of it.
