big park on the southern banks of the Tigris, at the western edge of the old town was the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery.
‘Keep your eyes open for the cemetery, Pikey,’ I told my point man. ‘It’s supposed to be around here somewhere.’
‘I am, boss. I can’t see a bloody thing. It’s all just wasteland. The only thing around for miles is this brick tower thing. Hang on, there’s some English writing on it. It says “Amara War Cemetery'.’
We had walked right into the middle of the place without having any idea. The cemetery was the size of a couple of football pitches, but there was very little left of any headstones. Most had been smashed up into fragments, which had themselves been overgrown by weed. The tall red brick obelisk with a domed black roof that Pikey had spotted had once been its front gate. But it was now badly chipped by bullet holes and desecrated by Arabic graffiti. The cemetery’s ramparts by the river had also fallen down, leaving the plot susceptible to regular flooding and water damage.
There was a total of 3,704 British and Commonwealth troops under its ground. Most were killed in the bloody Mesopotamian campaign against the Turks and Arabs in the First World War. It wasn’t our finest hour. We lost an entire division of 10,000 troops during the grim 147-day Siege of Al Kut in the winter of 1915–16, and a further 23,000 casualties from the relief force that failed to break it. It was seen at the time as the greatest British military disaster since the Charge of the Light Brigade, and far more costly in numbers. And it was fought in horrific conditions where soldiers had to resort to eating rats. Al Amarah itself was the scene of a major battle in June 1915 as the invasion force struggled north to Baghdad.
In one corner, a long stone memorial wall was just still standing. It had the names, rank and regiment of all the dead buried there on it in alphabetical order. Many of the names on the memorial wall were still legible. Two Victoria Cross holders are buried there, the Royal Navy’s Lt Commander Edgar Cookson and Lt Colonel Edward Henderson, of the North Staffordshire Regiment. Both were killed winning them. I could also make out the names of several of our regiment’s illustrious forebears. Among them were The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, The Queen’s Royal Regiment and The Buffs. Many of their soldiers had died young, the same age as a lot of my blokes in the platoon.
It was a sobering thought. For us, Al Amarah was a brand new experience. But for the British Army, it was very old territory. Along with every other cemetery for British war dead in Iraq, it had been entirely abandoned after the first Gulf War in 1991. Saddam refused the Commonwealth War Graves Commission access to pay their caretakers and gardeners. They still hadn’t found it safe enough to come back.
As soldiers, it was a desperately sad site. You deserved more than that if you had made the ultimate sacrifice for your country. We had a wander around the place and reflected on it. Nobody said much.
‘The poor sods,’ said Chris. Even he knew a
We didn’t stay for long. I could see some of the younger lads getting a bit too thoughtful, so we all took a few pictures for the albums back home, and moved off again. It was not a place to hang around.
In case we were in any doubt, during those days we also got final confirmation of whose side the Iraqi police were on.
The patrols involved regular visits to town police stations to check their armouries. We supplied them with new weapons and equipment to give them some pride and confidence, and so they could take on the OMS themselves. That meant AKs, brand new German-made Glock pistols, body armour and helmets, all painted nice and blue for them. Then we’d go back a few days later, and half the stuff would already be missing. ‘So and so has got it’, or more often ‘it got stolen’ were the regular excuses. But through the sights of our longs on the roof, we’d see OMS men cutting about with the Glocks stuffed into their trousers on the very same day.
On the surface, we’d still turn up to train the cops and offer advice. But it was all a facade, and we’d talk to them through gritted teeth. It was one big game. Both sides knew we had to carry on playing it to please our masters in Baghdad.
Some idiot young Iraqi coppers pushed it too far one day when we were on our way back to Cimic at the end of a patrol. There were three of them, in their mid-twenties, and they were lazing around on the roof of a small single-storey police station on the corner of Baghdad Street. They looked a shambles, all skinny and unshaven with their shirts hanging out.
As we patrolled past on the other side of the road, Pikey gave them the usual friendly wave. In response, one of the coppers put an imaginary rifle up to his shoulder, aimed it at us, and pretended to pull the trigger. His other two friends thought it was hysterical. We didn’t.
Pikey was straight over to them in a flash. The coppers stopped laughing instantly, and shat themselves. He ordered them down from the roof with hand signals and made all three stand to attention against a wall.
‘Not funny. Now listen to me, you fucking idiots. If you ever do that again, I’ll kick the shit out of you. Do you understand me? Do you?’ he screamed.
Smudge was right in behind him. To reinforce the point, he made his SA80 ready by loudly cocking a round into the chamber.
‘You wankers are supposed to be on our side,’ he added for good measure. ‘That’s why we’re fucking paying you. Think about that next time you want to crack a funny.’
Despite the language barrier, you could tell the cops got what Pikey and Smudge were saying. They were wide eyed and shaking. They didn’t do it again.
Frustration had been building in the platoon over how we’d been shackled from carrying out a kill, particularly over a hefty desire to attack the mortar crews who’d been chucking stuff at us pretty much every night. Several times the boys had asked permission to engage targets that were borderline under the rules of engagement. But Major Featherstone, who was very cautious, had repeatedly refused.
The OMS weren’t stupid. They had worked out our rules of engagement. So they gladly took the piss in the full knowledge there was fuck all we could do.
For three nights in a row, Ads had spotted a mortar team in a truck moving north over Yugoslav Bridge into the wasteland that they used to engage us. They would set up and fire behind buildings where they knew we had no direct line of sight on them. Brazenly, the team would then come back right in front of us. If the team were trying to wind up Ads, it worked.
One night, Ads — known for his sharp eye — even spotted the top of a mortar barrel in the back of an open- topped truck crossing back over the bridge just after we’d been hit. There were two men in the back with the equipment as well as the driver in the front. Ads radioed down to the Ops Room on his PRR.
‘Ops Room, Rooftop. I have three UKMs [Unknown Males] driving a flatbed pickup with a mortar barrel in the back. Am I cleared to engage?’
‘Can you see them setting up the mortar?’ was the response from Major Featherstone.
‘No, they’ve just finished. But I know it’s them. Can I engage?’
‘No, only if you can see them setting up a mortar.’
‘Well, can I fire a warning shot then, over the top of the vehicle?’
‘No.’
Silence, while Ads thought about the diplomacy of his next response. But not for very long.
‘Well, what’s the fucking point in us being up here then, sir?’
‘Wind your neck in, Somers,’ said Featherstone.
The next day, I was pinged to do a shift manning the radios in the Ops Room. I hated being stuck in there, but it was another of my responsibilities as a platoon commander. We all had to take it in turns. During a routine afternoon patrol, a multiple from the Mortars Platoon were ambushed at Blue 11, a major road junction east of Cimic on the river bank. They were pinned down by a huge weight of fire and taking incoming from a full 180-degree angle in front of them.
The twelve guys dived for shelter behind a garden wall in front of them. They couldn’t retreat because it would take them straight into one of the arcs of fire. They were in deep shit because one of them had taken a bullet in the chest and was bleeding badly. Dale had rushed up to the rooftop to lead the company’s response. As he leapt three stairs at once, he summoned every available sniper up there with him to help out. I heard all the action play out on my PRR.
With Maysan’s radio gremlins at work again, the only way Cimic had of speaking to the patrol was from Dale to one of its NCOs, Cpl Daz Wright, who was carrying a back-up set. And Daz Wright had to shout loudly over the
