From the scrabbling, it sounded as though soldiers’ boots were moving everywhere. I reckoned that the bodies of the men I’d killed had been discovered, the alarm had gone up, and a search party was closing in on me.
Most of the noise was coming from the end towards which my feet were pointing. I tried to turn my 203 in that direction, but the drain was too narrow and I couldn’t bring the weapon to bear. Now was the moment I needed a pistol, or better still a silenced one.
The scrabbling noise came closer.
I tensed myself, certain that a man would stick his head into the end of the pipe at any second. If he did, my only option would be to try to scuttle out the other end…
But what did the intruder turn out to be? A goat! A herd was being driven up the side of the road. I watched their legs move steadily past. The scrabble of their feet on rocks, echoing through the tunnel, sounded like a whole company of soldiers on the move. Again I was terrified that they might have a dog with them; if they did, it would surely get my scent.
Tortured by thirst and by noises close at hand, I somehow stuck out the day. That was the lowest point of my whole escape. I’d lost so much weight that lying down became ever more agonizing. However I lay, my bones seemed to be sticking out, with no padding to cover them, and every five or six minutes I’d be in such discomfort that I’d have to turn over. Spine, hips, ribs, knees, elbows, shoulders — everything hurt, and I was developing sores all over. I kept telling myself,
Eventually darkness fell. When I poked my head out of the end of the culvert, my morale took a lift again. Until then the nights had been clear, but this one was black as pitch, with the sky full of storm clouds that looked so threatening I even thought it might rain. The very idea of moisture was exciting. If rain did come, and I turned up my face, at least my parched mouth would get some refreshment. Maybe I could even collect water by spreading out my map case.
I crept outside. The night was so dark that when I looked in the direction of the vehicle control point, I couldn’t make it out. Moving closer, I found that the guards were still standing there, so I eased away until I could no longer see them, and when I was halfway between them and the anti-aircraft positions, I started walking at full speed.
Thank God for the darkness. Behind me nobody moved, and I got clean away. I’d been going for nearly two hours, parallel with a road, when all of a sudden a blinding flash split the darkness. Convinced I’d walked into ambush lights, I flung myself down. But then from behind me came a heavy explosion, and I realized that an air raid was hitting the installation I’d just left. The same thing happened twice more: a flash, and a few seconds later a really big, deep boom. I kept thinking,
Occasionally, far away to my left, I saw anti-aircraft fire going up into the sky, and I guessed it must be coming from the airfields we’d been told about at the beginning of our mission: H1 and H2. They were too far away for me to hear any noise, but I saw arches of tracer fire. At least it meant that the bases were under Coalition attack. I knew that ‘A’ and ‘D’ Squadrons were operating in that area, and I hoped it was they who were hammering the Iraqis.
I knew from the map that the Iraqi town of Krabilah should be coming up on my right. Krabilah lay on the border, and there was a Syrian town beyond the frontier. The thought of it kept me going, but only just. By now my feet were so bad that whenever I sat down for a rest they went from numb to excruciating. Upright, I couldn’t feel them much; sitting, I thought they were going to burst. Several times I sat there thinking,
The worst bit came whenever I stood up again, and the pain just exploded. Starting off, I couldn’t help gasping with the sheer agony. I had to shuffle my boots along the ground, and I kept thinking,
Never in my life had I been so exhausted. Often on selection and afterwards, I thought I had pushed myself to my limit — but this was something else. All I wanted to do was stop and rest, but I knew that if I did I would never reach the border before my body gave out.
Towards the end I was stopping and resting on my feet. Because they were so agonizing if I sat down, I took to reading my map standing up — which was not a good idea, as my torch was up in the air instead of close to the ground. I’d walk until I was really knackered, then prop myself against something so that I kept the pressure on my feet.
I was so far gone that when I reached some houses I was on the point of giving in.
I watched the houses for a while. They were only small places, but I’d find water in them, for sure, and food. Suddenly I decided I’d had enough.
I slid along one side of the nearest house, and found a window in the wall. It had iron bars down it, with a hessian curtain inside. Music was being played inside the room, and a candle or oil-lamp was flickering. I went past the window and reached the front of the building. Outside the door stood a car.
As I came round the corner I looked down, and there was a dog, lying outside the door. The moment I saw it, it saw me and went berserk, barking frantically. Back I scuttled, along the side of the house, and away off into the wadis. The dog came out, and more dogs from the other buildings joined it. They followed me for about a hundred metres, barking like lunatics, then stopped.
Up in the wadis, I came to a railway line, scrabbled through a culvert under it, and was back in the desert. With a jolt I realized that this must be the same railway that Stan and I had crossed all those nights earlier. If only we’d tabbed straight along it, we’d have been out of Iraq days ago.
Spurred on by my latest fright, I kept walking, walking, walking. According to my calculations, I should have been passing Krabilah on my right, but there was no sign of the town. What I didn’t realize was that every house had been blacked out because of the war, and that I had already gone clean by the place in the dark.
I reached a refuse heap, where loads of burned-out old cans had been dumped in the desert, and sat down among them to do yet another map study. I couldn’t work things out. Where was the town? Above all, where was the Syrian border?
I started walking again, and as I came over a rise I saw three small buildings to my front. With the naked eye I could just make them out: three square bulks, blacked out. But when I looked through the night-sight, I saw chinks of light escaping between the tops of the walls and the roofs. As I sat watching, one person came out, walked round behind, reappeared and went back indoors. I was so desperate for water that I went straight towards the houses. Again I was prepared to take out one of the inhabitants if need be. I was only fifty metres away when I checked through the night-sight again and realized that the buildings were not houses at all, but sandbagged sangars with wriggly tin roofs. They formed some sort of command post, and were undoubtedly full of soldiers. Pulling slowly back, I went round the side and, sure enough, came on a battery of four anti-aircraft positions.
If I’d walked up and opened one of the doors, I’d almost certainly have been captured. Once more the fright got my adrenalin going and revived me.
On I stumbled for another hour. My dehydration was making me choke and gag. My throat seemed to have gone solid, and when I scraped my tongue, white fur came off it. I felt myself growing weaker by the minute. My 203 was so heavy it felt like it was made of lead. My legs had lost their spring and grown stiff and clumsy. My ability to think clearly had dwindled away.
At last I came to a point from which I could see the lights of a town, far out on the horizon. Something
