I sat up. ‘Cimic?’
‘Yeah. There’s been some sort of accident. That’s all we know at the moment.’
Cimic, shit. Was it someone from Snipers? The nurse read my mind.
‘No, Sergeant, there’s no point in you waiting around for that. There’s nothing you can do for anyone in the state you’re in anyway. Go on, off you go.’
She was right. I stumbled over to the tents, popped her pills and slept for two solid days. I woke up feeling right as rain on the morning of 6 August, the day of my thirty-sixth birthday. I also woke up in a world that had changed considerably since I last saw it.
Moqtada al-Sadr had fed us the mother of all shit sandwiches.
After a couple of months at playing the politician, he’d discovered that democracy wasn’t really his bag after all. He finally threw all his toys out of the pram during a row about how many delegates he was allowed to bring to a national conference to decide how Iraq would elect a new government. He pulled out of the whole process, helpfully branding it ‘a sick joke on the Iraqi people’.
Flexing his muscles a little more, Moqtada then issued a series of violent threats at what he and his people might do if he didn’t get his way. The rabble rousing was a blatant challenge to the new and unstable government’s authority. It was also a clear breach of the peace agreement he had signed, and the Americans weren’t standing for it.
On 3 August, the Yanks had tried to nip any trouble in the bud before the streets exploded again. They wanted to avoid the mistakes they had made in April. A company of US Marines and truckloads of Iraqi police were dispatched to al-Sadr’s home in Najaf to arrest him. It was the worst thing they could have done.
Moqtada had guessed the Americans were coming. On arrival, the Marines were greeted by heavy gunfire, mortar shelling and a barrage of RPGs, courtesy of hundreds of Mehdi Army fighters who were already defending the house. Quickly, the clashes spread to the old city of Najaf. There, al-Sadr’s fighters had already taken up well- fortified positions around the great Imam Ali mosque.
Round Two was well and truly on. This time, however, it began with one very important difference.
In his passionate plea for jihad to all Iraqi Shia the next day, Moqtada put it about that the Americans had invaded Najaf to destroy the Imam Ali mosque, as a punishment for him not coming quietly. This wasn’t true, but it was easily the most inflammatory thing Moqtada could possibly say.
The sprawling, golden-facaded Imam Ali mosque is the most holy site of all for the Shia. Not only is it their Vatican, it’s also the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali, the man who led the factional split from Sunni Muslims to create the Shia faith. When Ali was murdered at prayer in 661 AD, he became the Shia’s most important martyr and from then onwards almost as highly revered as Mohammed himself. There was no greater insult to the Shia than to destroy this sacred spot at which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims paid homage every year.
In short, a threat to the Imam Ali mosque was seen by them as a threat to Shia Islam’s very survival.
Thanks to their itchy trigger fingers, the US military’s reputation for heavy-handedness had been well established in Iraq by August 2004. Moqtada’s legions of followers believed every word he told them. They soon whipped themselves up into an extraordinary state of fanatical religious fervour.
Redders was also back at Abu Naji having to do a stint in the battle group Ops Room. He had come to the Regimental Aid Post to give me an update on what was going on.
‘Put it this way, Danny, threatening the Imam Ali mosque is like waving a giant blood-red flag with bells on it in front of a seriously histrionic bull with a persecution complex. It’s Moqtada’s nuclear button, and he’s fucking well pressed it.’
‘I see.’ Clearly it wasn’t going to be much of a birthday.
From the peace and quiet of just two days ago, reports were now flooding into the Ops Room of serious trouble all over the country. Coalition forces had come under heavy attack again in the poor Shia suburbs of Baghdad and across all the major southern cities: Nasiriyah, Kut, Kufa and Diwaniya. Basra too was once more in flames. The Mehdi Army there had tried to take control of strategic buildings and were fighting open gun battles with British troops in the streets.
Now it would be nice to say that the people of Al Amarah rose above all the tosh being spoken by Moqtada, and got on quietly with their everyday lives. But if they’d done that, they wouldn’t have been the people of Al Amarah. The city was as bad as anywhere. From what it looked like in Abu Naji, possibly worse.
Within hours of the Moqtada pronouncement, the city’s mosques began broadcasting a furious call to arms. Thousands were out on the streets in angry protests, and the OMS were in the middle of it all, frantically rabble rousing and sinisterly mobilizing at equal pace. The shooting started almost immediately.
Redders also told me about the head casualty that had come in from Cimic. It wasn’t a sniper. It was Ray, the cheeky but lovable private from Mortar Platoon. Ray the Mortar Magnet. He was dead.
‘Ray? Jesus, poor guy. How the fuck did that happen?’
‘It’s unbelievable, Danny. As soon as the trouble started, the Iraqi Army who were manning the front gate fucked straight off. We had to put Ray and a couple of other lads on it instead. It was kicking off pretty badly in town. The OC’s rover group in a couple of Snatches came screaming back in and Ray raised the metal barrier on the chicanes to let them in.
‘You know the metal chain you use to pull the bloody thing up and down with? The cheese cutter pole on top of one of the Snatches caught it as it went past. That yanked the barrier straight back down right on Ray’s head. It must have pretty much killed him on the spot. Don’t think he knew anything about it. Which is something, I suppose.’
What a pathetic waste. After all we’d been through, Ray was killed in a stupid little accident like that. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, but it was the first fatality the battle group had suffered and it was a bitter blow.
Soldiers understand losses in combat, because that’s what happens in war. We’re all big boys and we know the risks. To lose someone so needlessly like that though was gutting. Ray especially, who’d shaken off everything the OMS had thrown at him. He was their casualty all right, albeit in a more oblique way. Of that we were all sure.
‘There’s more, Dan,’ Redders continued. ‘The OMS even managed to cut short a little memorial service organized for Ray yesterday. Just as the padre was saying his bit, the first round of a mortar barrage landed on the cookhouse roof. Everyone had to scarper for cover.’
‘Fucking wankers.’
‘That’s another thing — the mortaring is back something special as well. It’s up there with what we were getting at the start of May. Didn’t take them long to find all the tubes they’re supposed to have got rid of, did it?’
From that moment onwards, I bust a gut to get myself back to Cimic. A new movement ban on Snatches was coming into effect at dusk that evening. After that, fuck knows when the next Warrior column would move.
The situation was deteriorating by the hour. The CO’s desperate negotiations with city leaders to try to halt the violence had failed. Instead, the Mehdi Army stormed all of Al Amarah’s police stations and assumed full control over the town council. In effect, the town was theirs again.
Cimic was the uprising’s next target, and it was taking a pounding. As the most obvious as well as accessible symbol of the coalition’s presence in Maysan, the compound swiftly became the focus of the entire province’s resistance. For the same reason, it was imperative the battle group as the lawful Iraqi government’s agent defended it.
Just as the sun began to dip below the horizon, the two Snatches I had persuaded Featherstone to send down finally turned up at the front gate. I had the passenger door open before the lead vehicle even stopped moving.
‘Don’t even stop the engine, Sam, fucking go now.’
As we sped out of Abu Naji’s front gate, there was a series of mechanical clicks and clunks as everyone in the vehicle made their weapons ready.
We took a back route in up the city’s eastern flank as the Red route would be a certain death trap. As we cut into the old town, there were OMS gunmen milling around on pretty much every corner.
‘Just put your foot right down, Sammy. Don’t stop for anything, got it?’
‘Got it, Danny.’ He didn’t.
I depressed the button on my chest rig to speak into my PRR. ‘Everyone else, keep your eyes peeled. With a
