Bravo two zero (34 page)

    I still hadn't got my boots, and I couldn't walk properly on my raw feet. But I was mentally fit, and that was all that mattered. They can break any bone in your body that they choose, but it's up to you whether or not they break your mind.

    I hobbled down a long, cold, damp corridor with lino floors, and they sat me down at the end. It was completely dark-not a flicker of light came through my blindfold. From time to time I could hear the echo of footsteps moving along other corridors and crossing this one. Perhaps it was an office complex.

    After an hour or so there was again the sound of footsteps, but they were more irregular and shuffling than usual. Shortly I heard the sound of labored breathing. A guard took my blindfold off, and I watched him walk away. The corridor was about 8 foot wide, with tiled walls and doors every 15 feet or so. Down to the right there were two other intersections with corridors coming off, and that went down maybe 100 or 125 feet. It was dark. There was a Tiny lamp right at the other end of the building, glowing at the junction.

    I looked to my left and saw Dinger. He had a huge grin on his face.

    "Come here often, wanker?" he said.

    The guard came back with our boots and went out and joined his mates who were sitting a few feet away, keeping an eye on us.

    "Muslim or Christian or Jew?" one of them said.

    "Christians," I said. "English. Christians."

    "Not Jew?"

    "No. Christians. Christians."

    "Not Tel Aviv?"

    "No, not Tel Aviv. English. Great Britain."

    He nodded, and gob bed off to his mates.

    "My friend here," he said, "he's a Christian. Muslims and Christians are Okay in Iraq. We live together. No Jews. Jews are bad. You are a Jew."

    "No, I'm a Christian."

    "No, you are a Jew. Tel Aviv. Tel Aviv no good. We don't want Jews.

    We kill Jews. Why you come in our country? We don't want war. War is your problem."

    He was just talking, rather matter-of-factly, and seemed quite sensible.

    Iraq has a large Christian population, especially around the port of Basra.

    "We are not Jews, we are Christian," I said again.

    "Aircrew?"

    "Not aircrew. Rescue."

    If he'd wanted us to be Muslims or members of the Church of the Third Moon on the Right, that's what we would have been. I was just nodding and agreeing with everything, apart from the Jew bit. It was the early hours of the morning and we could sense the guards' attitude: "We're bollocksed, you're bollocksed, we have to look after you, let's just do it without any problems." Dinger was rubbing his feet. "Is it all right if I help him?" I said. They gave a wave that said: Yeah, do what you want. Dinger and I leant forwards to examine his feet. "Bob?" I whispered in his ear. "Don't know." "Legs?" "Probably dead. What about Mark?" "Dead. When did you get caught?" "Mid-morning. I heard you being brought in in the afternoon." "Are you all right?" I said. I couldn't believe I'd asked such a bone question. What a dickhead statement. He eyed me with a look that said: You knobber! The guards suspected that we were communicating, and one of them came over to stop it.

    Dinger asked him for a cigarette. The guard spoke pretty good English, but Dinger said, "Cig-ar-ette?" as if he was talking to a lunatic, and made the motions of smoking. It didn't get him anywhere. We both had a slightly better idea now of what was going on. I knew that Legs was probably dead. I still didn't know about Bob. We sat there for about an hour, but couldn't communicate any more.. My body was aching all over, and I was falling asleep. Your body gets so psyched up when you are being filled in, but when there is a period of calm, all the little aches and pains get magnified because you have nothing else to worry about. The feeling reminded me of school. When you have a fight as a kid, you're all sparked up, and it doesn't hurt so much initially. It's a couple of hours later that the pain comes out. My lips were still bleeding. My mouth had been split in several places during the beatings, and the wounds kept trying to congeal. But even the slightest movement made them reopen. My arse and lower back were sore from sitting all day on the hard concrete. The injuries made me feel even more exhausted, and I wanted to get my head down. I nodded off, my head lolling on my chest, then jerked awake a minute or two later. This went on for about half an hour. Then Dinger and I leant against each other and dozed.

    We were woken by the slamming of doors and the sound of talking. The glow of a Tiny lamp appeared at the bottom of the corridor and got bigger and bigger. Finally the lamp appeared, with lots of bodies behind it. We knew we were off again.

    We were handcuffed and blindfolded-not aggressively, rather nonchalantly. We stood up and shuffled together along the corridor and out into the open air. A Land Cruiser was waiting with its engine running.

    Our blindfolds were taken off again as we got in, though I had no idea why-perhaps there was just a breakdown in communications. Off we went, two guards in the front and one in the back.

    "Baghdad? Baghdad?" Dinger sparked up, nice and friendly.

    "Yes, Baghdad," the driver replied, as if he was stating the obvious.

    The driver knew all the back doubles. We drove for ten minutes through busy back streets. The vehicle had its headlights blazing. The guards didn't seem particularly bothered when I strained to see road signs and street names. I didn't see a single written word. There were no large magnificent buildings to be remembered and identified later. All the houses had flat roofs. By the look of it this was the slum area of the city. It must have been a residential area because there were no signs of bombing. It didn't even look as if there was a war on. The roads were tarmacked but full of potholes, and the sidewalk areas were just dust. Old cars were abandoned at the roadside, being pissed on by dogs.

    We stopped outside a pair of large, slatted wooden gates. They opened inwards as soon as the vehicle arrived, and we drove into a small courtyard not much bigger than the Land Cruiser's turning circle.

    Squaddies were waiting for us, and I felt the familiar knot of apprehension tighten in the pit of my stomach. Dinger and I looked at each other blankly.

    I wanted to look up as we were hustled out of the vehicle but made sure my head was down so I didn't antagonize anybody. It was pitch-black, and at every moment I expected the filling in to start. We were dragged into a block and along a corridor that was hardly wider than my shoulders. It was totally dark, and the jundie in front of me had to use his torch. We got to an area where there was a row of about a dozen doors, all very close together. The jundie opened one, pushed me inside, took off my handcuffs, and closed the door. I heard a bolt sliding and a padlock being applied.

    There was no ambient light whatsoever. It was so dark in the room that I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. There was a gagging stench of shit. I got down on my hands and knees and felt my way around. There wasn't much to feel. The room was tiny, and it didn't take me long to discover the two porcelain footpads either side of a hole about eight inches in diameter. No wonder my new bedroom stank. I was in a minging Arab shithouse.

    You have to take advantage of every situation, and here was an opportunity to get the sleep I desperately needed. I wasn't going to waste time thinking about anything. There wasn't room to stretch out so I maneuvered my body so that I was bent around the pan.

    There was no ventilation and the smell was overpowering, but there you go. It was just a relief not to have been beaten up. I fell asleep immediately.

10

    I woke up feeling as if I'd been drugged. Doors further down the corridor were opening noisily. There was some talking; I could hear it but I was not really conscious of it because I was in such a daze. I wondered what time it was. My body clock had completely packed in, and I didn't even know if it was night or day. It should be a priority to keep track of times and dates, mainly because it makes you feel a little bit better, but also because it keeps your mind sharp. If you lose track of days, then you'll lose track of weeks and then months. Time becomes meaningless, to the point where you lose touch with reality.

    Therefore you should make all attempts to keep a grip from day one. You look at people's watches if you can because they always have numbers; there's no such thing as an Arabic watch face None of the guards so far had worn a watch, which was pretty switched on of them. But I was wrecked, and such considerations were irrelevant at this stage. I was more concerned with whether I was going to survive. I was still in a stupor when they came to my door. "Andy! Andy! Andy!" a guard shouted through the door in a jovial, holiday camp kind of voice. "Is it Okay, Andy?"

    "Yep, yep, I'm all right!" I tried to sound happy and polite.

    My muscles had seized up; I was as stiff as a board. I tried my best to stand up. If they saw me just lying there, making no effort, they'd fill me in. But I couldn't move.

    The door opened and I saw daylight. I stretched out my arms, palms upwards, in a gesture of helplessness.

    "I can't move," I said. "Stiff."

    He called to another guard. I clenched my sore muscles in readiness for the kicking I was about to receive.

    They came into the toilet and bent over me.

    "Up, up, aaah," one said, all nice and gentle. They put my arms around their necks and lifted me upright, almost with compassion. They were actually concerned. I couldn't believe it.

    The crash of a door bolt and the friendly shout of "Good morning! Good morning!" echoed around the block as they helped me towards the door to the courtyard.

    The light was dazzling, even though the toilet block was in shadow. I squinted at the sun. It was fairly low, and I guessed the time was about eight o'clock. The sky was a beautiful, cloudless blue, and the air was cool and crisp, with just enough nip to make your face tingle and let you see your breath as you exhaled. It could have been an early spring morning in England, and I could have been coming out of my house and setting off for work.

    Directly in front of us was a vehicle, and beyond it a single-story building. The noises were subdued-vehicles in the distance, disembodied voices shouting further down the camp, city noises the other side of the walls. I heard a bird singing to my left. I turned my head and looked up; it was in a tree that grew on the other side of the courtyard wall. It sang its heart out and it was lovely to hear.

    Below it, in the corner where the toilet block met the wall, there was a pile of large metal segments. When aircraft drop cluster bombs, the ordnance breaks up at altitude and releases the payload of smaller bombs. The large outer casings fall to earth, and these were obviously being collected by somebody. They had English writing on them. It gave me a good feeling to see something from home. Somebody friendly was up there in the sky, not watching over me or even looking for me, but at least they were there, and they were hosing these people down.

    The vehicle was facing outwards, ready to go, and as we approached the engine fired up. I got in and was left with a couple of guards. One of them, the first black Iraqi soldier that I'd seen, reminded me of my battalion days. In the early eighties, when the Afro was in, our black dudes used to buy pairs of tights and cut the legs off to use as sort of bank robber masks to squash their hair down at night. The effect of this was to make their Afros really tight in the morning, so that when they put their berets on, their hair didn't poke out and look ridiculous. As soon as we were off duty, they'd get out the Afro comb and frizz it all out again.

    This lad had the mop on top, then the ring where the band of his beret had dug in, but all the rest was sticking out. Obviously he didn't put his head in a stocking bottom at night, and I wondered if I should pass on the beauty tip. It gave me a little giggle to remember the battalion. It seemed a lifetime ago. Dinger was in a bad way, shuffling like an old man, moving along about a foot every pace, being supported either side by two lads. It was quite funny to watch because Dinger towered a foot or so above them. It looked like a pair of little Boy Scouts helping an old-age pensioner.

    The bright light hit him, and he shuddered up like a vampire, putting his head down to protect his eyes. We'd been blindfolded and in darkness for so long, and all of a sudden we were getting full wattage, like bats caught in a searchlight.

    I saw that the guards were commando again, in DPM and carrying AK47s.

    Dinger didn't have his boots either, and his feet were cut. Much the same as me, there were big red scabs on the outside of his socks where the blood had congealed. His hair wasn't its usual dirty frizzy blond; it was matted and a dark reddish brown. His face was covered with a week of growth, and that, too, was covered with mud and scabs.

    As he was helped into the vehicle, he put his hand out and I grabbed hold of it and pulled him in.

    "All right, mate?" I said.

    "Yeah, I'm all right."

    I got the grin. The house might be bomb-damaged, but the lights were still on in the attic.

    It was another major victory. We'd made physical contact, we'd exchanged words. It was a big boost to my morale, and I hoped I'd had the same effect on him.

    The guards put the blindfolds on again, breaking the scab on the bridge of my nose and squashing my eyeballs so hard that I got snowstorms in front of my eyes. One of Houdini's secrets was to tense all his muscles as tightly as he could when they were tying him up, so that when he relaxed he had some room to play with. As they tied the blindfold, I tensed my cheek muscles to give me some slack later on. It didn't work.

    They put the handcuffs on again, good and tight. My hands were very tender, and the pain was unbearable. Perversely, I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth as the ratchets bit into the flesh because I didn't want them to see that they were hurting me. I'd been going through the process of playing on my injuries, and now I was being counterproductive again by trying not to show the pain.

    We sat and waited. As I listened to the engine ticking over, I wondered where we were going to. Had we convinced them we were inconsequential nuggets, not worth any further waste of manpower? Were we now on our way to a prison where we would just sit out the rest of the war in relative comfort?

    My thoughts were broken by what I assumed was one of the guards. Just as the driver put his foot on the clutch and engaged first gear, he poked his head through the open window and said quietly, "Whoever is your God, you will very soon be needing him." I didn't know if he was saying it out of compassion, or as a cruel and deliberate ploy to make us flap. But it had the effect of totally saddening me. My whole body dropped, as if I'd been told my dad was dead. It was a massive shock.

    Things had seemed to be on the up, and now this.

    Whoever is your God, you will very soon be needing him.

    The sincerity in his voice alarmed me. I thought: That's it then, it is going to get worse. The mention of God was horrifying because there was so much concern in the guard's voice when he said it, as if it really was only God who could save us now. Did it mean we were going to be executed? That was fine-I'd just have to hope it was publicized and the people back home got the news. What about torture? We'd heard the horror stories during the Iran-Iraq war, and the thought now crossed my mind that this was it: Here we go, it's time for the old chop your bollocks off routine, followed by ears, fingers, and toes, all nice and slow. But the optimist in me was fighting hard, saying: No, they wouldn't do that: they must realize they're going to lose the war; they don't want another Nuremberg.

    If the desired effect was simply to piss me off, then it succeeded-severely. The same went for Dinger. As the Land Cruiser lurched across the courtyard, he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, "Well, at least they can't make us pregnant."

    I giggled. "Yeah, fair one."

    The boy in the passenger seat turned round and gob bed off angrily, "No speak! No talk!"

    They might not be able to make us pregnant, but they might try and fuck us. It was a crazy assumption, but your mind does that sort of thing under duress. The thought worried me more than getting killed.

    Alone with my thoughts, I brooded about the conversation I'd had with Chris back at the FOB.

    "That's all you need on top of getting captured," Chris had joked. "To have six chutney ferrets roaring up your arse."

    We drove for about fifteen minutes in brilliant sunshine. I could tell we weren't heading out of town because we were still turning corners at quite frequent intervals and the noise of human activity didn't drop.

    People in the streets were shouting at one another; drivers were leaning on their horns.

    One of the blokes in the front farted. It was outrageous, a really putrid bastard. That's nice, I thought: on top of everything else I've now got to chew somebody else's shit.

    They thought it was hilarious, and the guy on the passenger side turned around and said, "Good? Good?"

    "Mrnmm, yum yum," Dinger said, full of appreciation, inhaling deeply as if he was on the se afront at Yarmouth. "Lovely, good stuff."

    Our noses were so clogged that not too much of the smell was getting through, but it was important to show them that we didn't care about anything they did. After a while the blokes up front couldn't hack it themselves and had to wind the window down.

    It was lovely to feel the cool breeze hitting my skin. I turned my face into it until I tingled. It kept my mind off my hands. I had perfected a technique of leaning forward and keeping my back straight to take the pressure off the cuffs. The problem was that every time I moved, they thought I was doing something to try and get away, so I'd get shoved back. But what was fifteen minutes of this between friends?

    The driver stopped laughing, and I sensed that we had arrived. Gates were being opened, and we drove over a different surface for another couple of hundred meters. The Land Cruiser was surrounded by angry voices. We had a reception committee.

    The moment the vehicle stopped the doors were pulled open. Hands grabbed my hair and face and pulled me out on my side. It was straight out and onto the ground, no messing. It wasn't the worst beasting we'd had-slapping, hair pulling, punches to the side, all the normal harassment stuff-but it came as a big, big shock. People were laughing and gob bing and I got my head down, clenching up, just letting them get on with it. It was their party.

    After two or three minutes I was hauled to my feet, and they started dragging me away. My legs wouldn't function, and I tripped and stumbled. They just kept dragging, very quickly, very rehearsed, like porters at an abattoir processing carcasses. There was hollering all around me, but I was trying to listen out for another group so I could keep tabs on Dinger. I couldn't hear anything outside of my own little environment.

    I kept trying to lift my feet so they wouldn't scuff on the floor and get damaged even more. We only went about a dozen meters. While they fiddled with the door, I tried to catch my breath. We went up a couple of steps that I didn't know were there, and I banged my toes and groaned. I went down, but they dragged me up again, shouting and slapping. We went along a corridor. The echoes were eerie and ugly. It had been hot, and now suddenly it was cold and damp and musty again. The building seemed derelict.

    The cell door must have been already open. They threw me against a corner and pushed me down onto the floor. I was arranged so that I was cross-legged but with my knees right up, my shoulders back, and my hands behind my back, still handcuffed. I didn't say or do anything; I just went with the flow. After another couple of slaps and kicks and a burst of rhetoric for good measure, they slammed the door shut. It sounded as if it was made of sheet metal bolted to a frame, but the frame must have been warped because they had to slam it really hard, and it banged and rattled with an echo that frightened me shitless.

    You're alone. You think you are alone. You can't see what's going on, you're disoriented, and you're worried. You're fucking worried. You're breathing heavily, and all you're thinking is: Let's just get it done.

    You can't be sure there's nobody in the room. Maybe they haven't all gone; maybe somebody's still looking at you, watching for a mistake, so you keep your head down, clench your teeth as best you can, keep your knees up, try to protect yourself against the punches and kicks that could start again at any instant.

    I heard the crash of another door. Dinger getting locked away, I assumed. It gave me a bit of consolation to know that we were both still in the same boat.

    There wasn't a lot I could do except just sit there and try to calm myself down. I took deep breaths and exhaled very slowly as I analyzed the events and came to the obvious conclusion that something unpleasant was definitely going to happen. We had been moved to a place that felt organized and geared up. There was a reception party to deliver a short, sharp shock; they knew the score, they knew exactly what they were going to do and when. But was this the prison we were going to stay in now, or were we still in transit and these boys just asserting their authority? Was I going to stay blindfolded and handcuffed for the rest of my days? If so, I was going to be in a desperate state. Would I come out with my eyes impaired? And Jesus -what about my hands?