He got a huge laugh from his mates. It was the normal good-natured ribbing between rotating troops that happens anywhere. But the Light Infantry boys really seemed to mean it.
Before all troops arriving in theatre got to their final destinations, you had to do two weeks of acclimatization at Shaibah Logistics Base first. So we were packed on board coaches and driven to it through the desert.
I peeked out from behind the coach’s blastproof curtains on the way. Iraq was pretty much exactly the shit hole I had expected it to be from what I had seen on the news. All along the route lay destroyed Iraqi tanks and armour. The desert plain looked just like a widely spaced junk yard. Endless remnants of the invasion, the first Gulf War before that, and the Iran–Iraq war even before that. Nothing had been cleared up. There was war detritus everywhere, and it’s what we had all been yearning to see.
It was also still the nearest most of us had ever been to an official war.
After an open-mouthed hour with all noses pressed to the windows, our first holiday in Shaibitha began. The point of it is to get used to the heat and desert conditions of southern Iraq inside the safety of a great big base in the middle of nowhere, where nobody is going to shoot at you or try to blow you up. It’s also used as a place to give soldiers in Iraq a few days off from the front line — hence the Ibiza nickname.
Shaibah is the main supply hub for the 9,000 British troops in the country. It’s based on an old British barracks built in the 1920s when we first ruled Iraq. But these days, it’s the nearest the British Army has ever come to going to war the American way. It was a small slice of home shoved right in the middle of miles of sand. Amid row upon row of big air-conditioned accommodation tents is everything a squaddie could ever want. Apart from beer and shagging, that is. There are fast food trailers like Pizza Hut and Burger King, a massive gym, coffee shops, hairdressers, souvenirs, a cinema and even a traditional British pub — alcohol-free of course.
After we’d found our lodgings, the three other platoon commanders and I got an update on the general picture in Iraq from the company OC (Officer Commanding), Major Justin Featherstone. He’d been out for a bit as part of the advanced party. His news was dramatic.
In the last forty-eight hours while we’d been travelling, it had all well and truly kicked off out there. Across large parts of the country, the firebrand Shia Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr had stirred up a shit storm. His fighters had seized police stations and government buildings, and attempted to storm a series of coalition forces’ headquarters. The fighting was at its worst in the major southern cities of the Shia heartlands. In the city of Kut just 100 miles north of Al Amarah, a Ukrainian soldier was killed and Polish troops even had to temporarily abandon their base and pull out of the city altogether.
The trouble had been brewing for months. In September 2003, Moqtada declared his own shadow government for Iraq. He promised to rule it as a strict Islamic state and started rubbing out his rival Shia leaders. Eventually, the Americans’ patience ran out. In March 2004, they closed down his newspaper and issued a warrant for his arrest for murder. In retaliation, he mobilized the Mehdi Army. On 5 April, fighting broke out. The al-Sadr uprising had begun.
Elsewhere across the south, 500 Italian troops in Nasiriyah had fought a fierce battle with militia, suffering twelve casualties of their own, but killing fifteen and wounding thirty-five enemy. Spanish soldiers were fighting on the street with Medhi Army gunmen in Najaf, and the Bulgarian base in Kerbala came under heavy grenade and machine-gun fire. An American soldier was killed by a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) in the poor Shia stronghold Baghdad suburb Sadr City, recently renamed after Moqtada’s father. And three Japanese civilians and seven South Koreans had been taken hostage, and the Mehdi Army were threatening to burn them alive. From what Featherstone could pick up, there had even been a bit of scrapping in Al Amarah too.
The ‘good’ news, Featherstone said, was that it wasn’t ex-pected to last much longer. Intelligence had predicted the uprising would peter out pretty quickly after the initial outburst.
Shit. We were sitting on our hoops in Shaibitha watching everyone else have all the fun on CNN. It was the same old bloody story for the PWRR all over again. Yet again, we were going to miss the action. By the time we got up there, there would have been a settlement, or al-Sadr would be dead. The whole storm in a tea cup would be all over. Un-fucking-believable.
What was worse was there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I had to wait for the rest of the platoon to arrive and take them through acclimatization. I was sick as a parrot.
I couldn’t work out whether Major Featherstone was happy or sad about the al-Sadr uprising. Probably a bit of both. It was exciting for him like it was for all of us because he was a soldier. But it also meant an increased risk to his men, and that for him was a major worry.
Major Justin Featherstone was very much a soldier’s soldier. He was a very approachable and friendly guy, who always made a big effort to be liked by all the blokes. That really mattered to him, and so far he’d pretty much achieved it. Physically, he was balding prematurely for his thirty-five years, but well built and always carried a cheeky smile. And he was never afraid of getting his hands dirty and mucking in with any shitty task he’d given his men.
But if he had one flaw, it was that he was born a
Being given the command of Y Company, the most skilled soldiers in the unit, on an operational tour was a chance for Major Featherstone to really prove his worth to the army. He was very keen to take it. That meant keeping his nose clean doing a faultless job. Most importantly, that meant keeping all his blokes alive.
When the rest of Sniper Platoon finally did arrive over the next few days, I began the programme immediately. That meant drinking endless bottles of water, platoon runs, lots of smiling, and practising our Iraq drills. The most important one I wanted to get us good at was top cover. That’s the two blokes who stand up in the back of Snatch Land Rovers to give the vehicles all round protection while it’s moving. If there was any action still left to be had up in Al Amarah, I wanted the boys to be ready for it.
There were also endless lectures on hygiene. Exactly how you should wash your hands before you ate, or you’d spend the rest of the tour in the shithouse with D and V. Shaibah also has a shooting range with 100 lanes in it for blokes to zero their weapons sights. It’s the biggest the British Army has anywhere, and we thought it was awesome.
But the bottom line was Shaibah was well and truly the land of the REMF — Real Echelon Mother Fucker. It was a Yank phrase from Vietnam, but it’s been adopted by English-speaking military all over the world. And it was doing my head in. After four days of the place, I was chomping at the bit, so Daz and I resolved to scheme a way of getting up to Al Amarah as soon as we could. He felt exactly the same as me.
Corporal Daz Williamson was my 2i/c and, at just a year younger than me, had the seniority to be in charge of the platoon himself. But a while back he’d been demoted from sergeant for punching some gobby PT instructor in the face. We agreed on pretty much everything — just what you need from your deputy.
I had another word with Major Featherstone.
‘Sir, I’ve got to get up there. With the current crisis, it’s really important Daz and I do a good and thorough handover with the Light Infantry sniper platoon commander before he goes.’
‘Right.’
Lying, I went on: ‘I’ve heard he’ll be on his way down in a couple of days. Chris can stay behind and bring the boys up in two days’ time.’
‘Oh, I see. Well if you think you have to, you’d better go then, Dan.’
I gave Chris the good news.
Corporal Chris Mulrine, my No.3, was very popular for his sharp wit as much as his fine soldiering. He had no time for army bullshit and, as a massive
In full Melchett impression, ‘Yeees, that’s the spirit. They don’t like it up ’em.’ He shook his head.
‘You bastard. I get it, I’ll stay here and be a fucking REMF and you and Daz will have a right old caper. Off you go.’
That settled it. Daz had managed to find a couple of rides on a routine road convoy up to Al Amarah. They needed a couple more armed escorts. We jumped at the chance of a lift, they jumped at the chance of getting a couple of snipers to cover their arses.
We found the convoy of six eight-tonne lorries and a couple of Snatch Land Rovers by Shaibah’s main gate at
