Within ten minutes, I was on the stairs up to the Ops Room on Cimic House's first floor. I hadn't even bothered to take off my webbing or body armour. The place was very busy.
Confronted with the sea of people, I boomed: 'So what fucking dickhead made that stupid jackshit call then?'
There was total silence. Slowly, all the men in the room parted to reveal Major Featherstone leaning back in a large office chair.
'Well, actually Danny, it was mine.'
'Well that was a fucking good call wasn't it, sir? Top fucking marks.'
Total silence. Featherstone bolted up, red in the face.
'Right, Sergeant, we'd better take this outside.'
'Fucking fine with me.'
On the first floor balcony, overlooking the Tigris, we had the mother of all screaming matches. The entirety of Cimic House must have been listening to it. It would have been hard not to.
Featherstone was proper angry too now that I'd embarrassed him so badly. He was right to be. I was way out of line. But with the temper I had on, I wasn't going to admit it.
'What the fuck do you think you're doing, Sgt Mills? How dare you talk to me like that?'
'Sir, I don't want to fucking fall out with you, but that was a piss awful call. You were in the wrong.'
'Oh, you fucking think so, do you?'
'Yes I do. One, the copper was in uniform and that brings the police into disrepute. Two, he's drunk as a fart. Three, there was a good chance he was going to kill somebody. How does it look to the terrified locals if we're there and just walk on by? And how would it look if the newspapers found out that Private Smith, Y Company, was killed after Major Featherstone, Y Company, had just rearmed the drunken twat who did it? Not to mention our complete loss of face in front of the locals. He's lucky I didn't blow his fucking head off then and there.'
'Tough shit. Look at the big picture will you? We are not judge and jury in this town. We're here to help the local security forces. That doesn't mean publicly undermining them, no matter what they're doing.'
'He's already undermining himself by his actions. He's minging in uniform with a gun in his hand!'
'Well, it was my call. You've had your say now, Dan. Don't ever do that again in my Ops Room.'
The whole row was in code. It wasn't really about the copper, and we both knew it. But we also both knew it was better to have a shouting match about something minor like that than something major, like what to do when presented with the enemy. That was a row that it would have been very hard to come back from. I knew he thought Chris and I were dangerous and too aggressive. But he never once told me I was taking too many risks. And I never told him that he was overcautious and too Politically Correct.
The following morning, he came to find me.
'Danny, can I have a word? About last night, I've been thinking about it. It was a shit call, and you were right. I apologize.'
'Right, fair enough, sir. It was wrong of me to lose it at you in the Ops Room as well.'
Letting off steam relieved a bit of the tension between us. Featherstone had said sorry, and I respected him for that. He wasn't a bad bloke either, and he had a job to do too. In the cold light of day, he did have a fair point about demeaning the coppers, and I felt a bit embarrassed at exploding on him like that. Ultimately, the buck stopped with him. He was the one getting the abuse from the CPA sorts for us being too warlike, and he'd be the one who would have to write to the mothers and fathers of anyone killed. That's why they pay officers more than the rest of us.
After that, I tried to understand the OC's way of thinking a little more, and he gave me a bit more rope. There was already more than enough fighting to be done outside of camp to bring it indoors as well.
It has to be said that the heat also wasn't really helping anyone's temper.
Just when we thought it couldn't get any hotter, it did. It was the end of the first week of June, and the temperature was already hitting 50 degrees centigrade. It was silly heat. It made every task harder, every day longer. And it was relentless.
Sentries manning Front and Rear Sangars in the middle of the day would often collapse from heatstroke. They were in the shade too. It was decided that no foot patrols would go out between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. when the sun was at its hottest. Al Amarah looked like a ghost town between those hours anyway. Even the OMS locked themselves up inside. When you did go out, you'd always take care to get the lads in the shade every half an hour or so for a quick five-minute cool-off and a water break.
The worst place of all to be during an Iraqi summer was in the back of a Warrior. Built to repel a Soviet invasion of Germany, they had no air conditioning and little ventilation. Just a heater. As soon as you got in the back of one, bodily fluids would start running straight out of the bottom of your trouser legs like a tap. Blokes cooped up together for long periods of time in a battle would often be reduced to vomiting on each other as the temperature inside got up to 80°C. Regular checks would also have to be made on the Warrior drivers on guard at Cimic's gates. They'd pass out having to sit in the front compartment next to the hot engine block.
Generally speaking, the lads will put up with anything as long as you've got a nice cool room to come back to at the end of the day. But with the accommodation blocks still out of bounds, we didn't even have that. It was still dozens of blokes crammed into every Cimic room, hot-bedding, tripping over each other, and with the place permanently shrouded in a smelly thick cloud of body odour and sweaty socks.
Sleep became ever harder at night. No matter how knackered you were, you'd always wake up in a pool of sweat after no more than an hour or two – even wearing just your jockeys on top of your sleeping bag. It was hard to believe we had July and August – traditionally Iraq's hottest months – still to come.
News came through that there had been two weeks of nonstop rain in Hampshire. We marvelled at what that must feel like. It hadn't rained since we'd stepped off the plane.
Great little morale boosts came along from time to time that would make the heat bearable.
'Front Sangar to Ops Room,' came the excited message one day over the PRRs. 'Anyone for a jolly little punt?'
An eight-tonne truck had just turned up among a resupply convoy loaded with two brand new Mark 5 rigid raider patrol boats on the back of it. The OC had put a request in for them, but nobody believed they would ever arrive. The Mark 5s are the small flat things the Royal Marines use. Every time we wanted to go over to the north bank, we'd have to cross Yugoslav Bridge. The only other alternative was going through Aj Dayya and that wasn't sensible. Our enemy had realized that, so the bridge became their shooting alley with us as the tin ducks. The boats were great, because they allowed us another discreet infiltration over the Tigris from Cimic without even having to step out of the front gate.
We heard that, by the beginning of June, the battle group had killed a total of 280 enemy fighters in Al Amarah since our arrival. That was an average of almost five a day. Of course, it was a tiny fraction compared to the final sum. Not bad for a couple of months' work though.
At another O Group, it was also announced that Bravo One had taken a bullet in the kidney. That got a particularly big cheer. Bravo One was the codename we had given to the head of the Al Amarah OMS. His name was Saad e Mar. He was in his forties, had a big black beard, big eyes and big ears. He carried a grenade and pistol on him at all times, even in bed. He was wanted by the coalition for all sorts, and we'd been told to kill or capture him if we ever got the opportunity.
He was also a big figure in the Mehdi Army nationally, and had been at some hoods' meeting in Najaf when they had got into a gunfight with the Americans. Sadly, he was still living to tell the tale. Patrols were all cancelled for a day as we kicked in the doors of three different houses to nick him on his sickbed. He was nowhere to be seen. We just missed him at one, and he'd escaped by vaulting a back fence. I only hoped that opened up his stitches again.
The best morale boost of all came thanks to
a full colonel's arrival one day in Cimic. He'd been sent out to see us all the way from Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood. As more and more contact reports filtered back to them, the generals back in London had begun to appreciate the level of combat intensity we were engaged in. They thought it was time to give us a bit more of a level playing field against the OMS.
All the patrol commanders were told to report to Cimic's briefing room in the main building. The OC and Dale were there too. Sitting crosslegged on a chair was the colonel. Tall, with greying hair and cold blue eyes, he had a huge natural air of authority. Not someone you'd fuck with in a hurry. He addressed all of us.
'First of all chaps, well done. What you've been doing out here hasn't gone unnoticed, I assure you. It's not what any of us had expected, admittedly. However, you've responded terrifically. The chiefs have huge admiration for you, and I have been asked to pass that on.
'The real reason I'm here though is to talk about the rules of engagement. Let's cut to the chase. You're war fighting out here, without anyone saying it's war fighting. What we need to know is whether you feel you can still get the job done under the existing rules. Do you have any questions about them?'
We discussed a series of different scenarios. In a normal gunman-versus-soldier situation, we told him we felt no restrictions. They were clearly endangering life so we could kill them. Other areas were a lot greyer. The OMS knew our rules as well as we did. They exploited that knowledge mercilessly, as Ads's experience with the mortar teams crossing Yugoslav Bridge showed.
The tactic that really wound us up was their regular use of unarmed men to guide mortar or RPG fire on to us in Cimic. The fuckers would stand right out in the open within easy range, knowing we couldn't shoot them. They were clearly men of authority. They'd use their position to openly orchestrate the battle and work out exactly where we were so their fire would be more accurate. We'd given them the Northern Ireland name for the scrotes who did the same thing for the IRA – dickers.
I put one scenario to the colonel that I'd witnessed on May Day while over watching Private Beharry's abandoned Warrior.
'How about this one, sir? An unarmed dicker in normal civvies popped out of an alleyway in front of Cimic, kneeled down in an RPG firing position, and pretended to pull the imaginary launcher's trigger while pointing at the Warrior. A couple of seconds later, a couple of RPG warheads came flying down into the thing from out of our view. The unarmed bloke gave a thumbs-up to his mates, and fucked off. What should we do about that?'
'Shoot him.'
'Really?'
'Yes. He is showing just as much intent to endanger life as the RPG man himself. He is just as guilty of the action. A dicker can be a legitimate threat, so he can be a legitimate target too.'
'What, even if he's unarmed?'
'I'm not encouraging wanton killing and recklessness, Sergeant. Threat to life is still the governing principle, and that must be very clear.'
The colonel smiled. 'But nowhere in the ROE does it say you can't shoot unarmed people.'
Something very interesting happened in that room. Without actually openly saying so, the colonel had completely rewritten our rules of engagement. He had given us tacit permission to shoot unarmed civilians if and when we felt it necessary. That was proper war fighting ROE, and it was unheard of for the sort of tour we were supposed to be on. It also had been done without ministers having to tell parliament and cause a big hullabaloo across the liberal sections of the media. The colonel was a pretty senior guy, but it wouldn't have been his call. That would have had to come all the way down from the top.
The date of his visit was 6 June, the sixtieth anniversary of the D Day landings. It was fitting, because what he said was a liberation for us too. It was exactly what we had needed. Of course, the relaxation didn't mean that we went straight out to drop a load of twelve-year-olds for chucking stones at us. But it did give us the ability to blunt a few of the enemy's subsequent attacks; attacks after all that had only one intention, to kill us.
The next unarmed dicker the lads managed to get a bead on got quite a surprise.
He was spotted a few days later, in the middle of a series of concerted mortar strikes. The base plate was well out of our view from Cimic. Five mortar rounds were launched during the first volley, landing in and around the compound. Longy and Des were spotting for Oost. They'd already seen a shady-looking character watching us from a wall on the other side of the dam to the west. In his late twenties, with short wavy black hair and a neat goatee beard, he was carrying binoculars and a radio.
Longy brought Oost on to the wall 600 metres away, and the South African calmly waited for the second mortar volley to start. Sure enough, when the dicker popped up again to have a good look and radio in where the new rounds were landing, they knew they'd got their man. He was leaning out from behind the wall with the top half of his body and his right leg exposed. Oost pumped a 7.62mm green spot straight into the right side of his ribcage. It tore his insides out, and he dropped like a stone.
'That'll teach him,' said Oost as he looked up from his L96's sight. 'You should have seen the look on that twat's face.'
The kill had a substantial effect on the dicking. The OMS spotters wound their necks in pretty sharpish. Word spread that if you tried it on now, you were going to get your head blown off. It made their mortar aiming harder which meant more fell off target. They soon compensated by upping the rate of rounds to increase the probability of landing some in the right place.
The other visit we got from the UK at that time was a delegation from OPTAG. Two of their senior sergeants came out to do a routine inspection of the company to see if their teaching back in Kent needed any updating. Being the arrogant sods that they were, the two sergeants didn't initially believe it did. They soon changed their minds.
16
Sniper Platoon was landed with taking the OPTAG sergeants out on our patrols for a day. Between us, we nicknamed them Pinky and Perky because after a morning in the hot sun, they looked like two little burnt red sausages.
Pinky and Perky were very gung-ho. They'd escaped their dull jobs in England for a few days and they wanted to see a bit of the enemy. That afternoon, we took them out on a long patrol right through the north bank. We walked bloody miles, it was bloody hot, but all we were attacked by was a pack of rabid dogs. Pinky and Perky were not very impressed. They also knew how to wind us up.
'Come on, Danny, I thought you lot were supposed to be in the thick of it out here?' goaded Pinky, who came from a posh Guards regiment. 'Can't you get us some action, war boy?'
They came out with us that night too. We were tasked with a joint patrol along with a multiple from Recce Platoon to show a presence around the houses of two local civilian workers in camp who had been threatened by the OMS. We set off in different directions on one loop of the town centre, and agreed to meet up in the middle.
Our very own Glasgow TA action man Major Ken Tait asked if he could come along too. Ken always jumped at any opportunity to get away from his desk. His experience with us during our first contact always made him a welcome addition.
On the streets, there were a lot of people out drinking and making merry. That was unusual, but we were told it was because a big wedding was going on in the direction we were heading. We turned west on to Nasiriyah Street, which links the Blue route with the Yellow route, and then south into a smaller less well lit road that led down alongside an old cemetery to the left.
I was looking forward to catching a glimpse of the dirty great big Iraqi bride. Instead, the road was totally empty and silent. The worst of all combat indicators. Somewhere ahead in the darkness at the end of the street, we heard a group of men run across our path, exchanging urgent whispers.
'Standby, standb—'
I had just about enough time to get a quick warning out before the whole fucking world erupted.
A terrifying low-pitched pounding noise opened up to our left. At the same time, the top of the high b
rick wall next to our right shoulders began to disintegrate. A long burst of heavy machine-gun fire was ripping just over our heads and turning the wall's upper brickwork to dust. Then, another similar hellish din opened up from a rooftop directly to our right.
They were Dshkes, a Russian-made beast of a thing that fires half-inch calibre rounds and was designed to bring down helicopters. If one of them hit your arm, it would take it right off. If it hit your body, you'd have an entry and exit hole the size of a dinner plate. And if the gunner had aimed just a fraction lower, he would have blown Pikey and my heads off. I'd never seen anything like it.
The whole patrol cowered down as the lefthand Dshke demolished a 20-metre-long strip of the wall. A flying chip of brick lodged in OPTAG Perky's cheekbone, opening up a little cut. The gun was positioned 200 metres away on the roof of a big white house that adjoined a mosque. Between the mosque and us was the cemetery.
Though the Dshke gunner on the rooftop to our right was far closer, his fire was slapping into the road further away from us as he struggled to traverse the huge tripod-mounted weapon's arcs into a tighter angle onto us.
I made a split-second call, and decided the most dangerous fire was coming from the mosque.
'Everybody to the left side of the road. Take cover behind the cemetery wall!'
We sprinted over as one. Without me saying a word, Ads stopped and turned around in the middle of the road. With balls of steel, he raised his SA80 to his shoulder and lined up the Dshke gunner just above us in his sights. Five seconds later, as the gunner desperately tried to bring his rounds on to Ads, he was dropped with two single shots.
'Target down,' Ads announced, as he joined the rest of us, cool as a cucumber.
It was the most professional enemy ambush we had yet encountered. And it damn near worked. But half the immediate threat had been neutralized, thanks to Ads, and we could now take these bastards on. Half a dozen AKs also opened up on us from the mosque area. The drills were well practised by this stage and I didn't need to say a word. Calmly, the lads started peering over the cemetery wall and putting rounds back at the muzzle flashes.