had moved quickly, and I could see a group of British soldiers using the buildings in front of us as cover. They were firing around the corners at the attacking forces.
One man readied a fearsome looking missile launcher, which he hoisted on his shoulder, and then he ran out between the buildings, straight into the line of fire. He knelt down and took careful aim at what I presumed must be a tank. It was an act of such bravery and madness that I stood riveted to the spot, trying to understand what would make someone risk their lives so foolishly. The only answer was training and necessity. It was the kind of thing that would be unthinkable in a skirmish, but in the heat of war it was almost commonplace. This was true soldiering. It was awe inspiring, actually. And doomed.
A swarm of bullets thudded into the soldier, and he toppled backwards, arms flailing. The rocket launcher flipped over his fragmenting head, still held in his right hand, until it was pointed straight at us. Then his dying fingers twitched and the rocket screamed free of its housing.
Someone must have shouted for us to run. We scattered and kept moving. Sanders, Jack and I ran one way; the two squaddies ran the other. They drew the short straw. The rocket slammed into the far corner of the barracks, hitting an oil tank used for heating. I was much closer to this explosion than I had been to the one at the main gate and it was stronger than anything I'd ever felt before. I lost consciousness in mid-air.
When I came to, I was lying on a hard metal surface, being bounced up and down. My head felt like someone had filled it with nails, and every bone in my body ached.
'Where…' I started to say, but my voice was drowned out by the sounds of a revving engine and a machine gun. I looked up and saw that I was in the back of a jeep. Next to me crouched Jack, SA-80 at his shoulder, firing out the back at a similar vehicle which was pursuing us. The enemy jeep had a white star painted on its bonnet, and a bloody great machine gun mounted above the driver's cab. A soldier was standing in the back, firing at us as we drove far too fast along a muddy track on Salisbury Plain.
I was about to reach for my gun and join the fight when our tyres exploded. The jeep lurched to one side then another as the driver – Sanders? – struggled to keep control. But it was hopeless. The jeep swayed from side to side with increasing velocity, then we hit a rock in the road and we rolled and span. Everything around me whirled and crashed as I was flung up and down, smashing every part of me into the four sides of the jeep's cab as the vehicle tumbled down a slope. We were still falling when my head met Jack's with an enormous crack.
I slipped into the darkness again.
The next time I woke I felt like I'd never move again. My head was beyond painful. I couldn't focus my eyes, which were as full of blood as my mouth and ears. I was lying on my face in thick wet mud.
It was like that moment when you get home from the pub, drunk. Your head hits the pillow and you realize that even though you're lying down, your senses think you're still moving and you feel the first inklings of the nausea and awfulness that's going to take up the next day or so of your pathetic drink-sodden excuse for a life. The only sense that was working properly was my sense of smell. And all I could smell was petrol and blood.
I could hear an engine idling nearby, footsteps approaching, and two American voices shouting: 'Show us your hands! Get down on the ground!' That kind of thing. So that told me at least one of us was alive and moving.
I blinked and concentrated until I began to make out shapes. I wiggled my fingers and toes, trying to work out if anything was broken. My limbs felt okay, but every movement sent shooting pains across my ribs, at least three of which were definitely fractured. The pain was excruciating and all I could think about was that I'd be lucky if I'd only punctured a lung.
When the world stopped spinning again and the pain receded slightly, I gently lifted my face clear of the mud and saw that I was lying in a ditch. I must have been flung clear as the jeep rolled. It also meant that the bad guys probably didn't know I was here. Slowly, agonisingly, I got to my knees and lifted my splitting head over the edge of the ditch. Our jeep was lying on its back about twenty metres away from me, directly ahead. Its lights were still on but the engine was dead. The American jeep was parked on a ridge above it, and the man in the back had a spotlight, and his huge machine gun, trained on the scene below him. Sanders was on his knees with his hands behind his head, an American soldier standing over him. Another soldier was pulling Jack out the back of the jeep by his boots. The boy was a dead weight and he left a deep groove in the mud behind him.
That galvanized me – an injured child needed my help.
I reached down and cursed. My sidearm had been lost in all the confusion. I was unarmed and concussed, with broken ribs, dull hearing, blurred vision and nausea, and I was wearing a uniform too big for me and boots that dangled off my ankles like weights. Yet somehow I had to take out three armed American soldiers.
I'd have been better off in the heat of battle.
The obvious target was the man in the jeep. With the spotlight shining down, I couldn't tell if there was a driver in the cab. If there was only the gunman, I maybe had a chance, but if there was a driver then I was screwed. To my left the ditch led around a small hillock, so I crawled through the cold mud on my hands and knees, sure that at any moment the squelching noises would bring a soldier running. But I was lucky, and I rounded the hillock safely. Now I could move. I dragged myself out of the ditch, grinding my ribs together and groaning with pain in spite of myself. I couldn't run, so I shambled as best I could down a small depression and into a copse of trees which provided cover as I climbed the ridge down which our jeep had tumbled.
When I got to the top I collapsed in a heap, crying in agony, unable to make myself take another step. But I had to. I gritted my teeth and breathed short and fast, hyperventilating to help ease the pain – after all, the world was already spinning, a little extra lightheadedness couldn't make much difference, could it? Then I pulled myself up and staggered on. I approached the American jeep from behind and saw, to my relief, that there was nobody in the driver's compartment.
With no gun, I would have to get very close in order to put this guy out of commission. There was no point walking up to the jeep, he'd shoot me down. I couldn't vault up on to the flatbed and struggle with him – I wasn't capable. I had to get him down somehow, and I needed a weapon. I cast around until I found a large piece of jagged flint which I grasped in my hand tightly. Then I just improvised.
'Help,' I muttered, shuffling towards the jeep with my hands to my head. 'Someone help me, please!' I didn't look up at the gunman. Instead I gazed vacantly left and right, as if blind. 'I can't… I can't see. Oh God, someone please help me.'
It didn't need much acting to sell the guy; I was barely functional. I made sure not to look straight at him, but as I gazed around, pretending to be sightless and confused, I saw him get down from the jeep and walk towards me, machine gun levelled. If he decided to shoot me, there was nothing I could do. As he got within a few metres of me I slipped and fell. I wish I could say that was part of my plan, but I genuinely lost my footing and went sprawling on the stoney track, crying out as I hit the ground. I lay there and cried. 'Oh God, please help me, someone, please God.' But I kept hold of my stone.
The gunman, completely convinced by my impression of a concussed, bleeding wreck who could barely stand, did the damnedest thing. He took pity on me. He swung his gun over his shoulder so it rested with the muzzle pointed skywards and he reached down to help me up.
'Take my hand, ma'am,' he said.
I reached up with my left hand. 'Oh, thank you, thank you. Who's that? Where am I?'
He grabbed my hand and kneeled down to put his arm round my chest and lift me up. As he did so I swung my right hand as hard as I could and smashed the rock into the side of his head. He grunted and fell sideways, dragging me with him. We splashed down into a puddle in a tumbling heap. I was weak, though, and the blow didn't knock him out, it merely stunned him. He tried to crawl away from me but I held on to his belt and pulled myself up his body, each movement causing awful pains in my chest. He tried to roll over and fight back, but he was too badly hurt. After what seemed like an age but was probably mere seconds, I managed to get myself into a position where I could grab his head. I pushed hard on the buzz cut hair, pressed his face into the puddle, and then collapsed on top of him, holding his face under the water with the weight of my whole body as he writhed and bucked and struggled to throw me off. But I just lay on top of him, crying with pain and anger and horror at what I was doing, until his struggles weakened and, eventually, stopped. I lay there for another minute, just to be sure, and then I rolled off him, lying flat on my back in the mud, breathing hard.
There was no time for rest, though. I bent double, levered myself upright and walked to the jeep. I couldn't climb into the flatbed, I was just too weak, so I flopped on to it and then lifted one leg over the edge and dragged myself on to the hard metal surface. Then I used the machine gun's column to pull myself upright, and I looked down the ridge. Sanders was still kneeling, and Jack was lying beside him. I could see his chest rise and fall, so I
