I never told anyone this. I've written it down here in my will and testament, that's all. Because I stopped thinking about it, what happened on that Christmas Day. You can let a thing like that play on your mind. If you're weak. And if you're off to war, and you've got boys to look after, you don't want that shit playing on your mind and jogging your elbow. You don't want it.
I pushed it to the back of my mind. Anyway the drum was beating. Form up. Move out. Press on. Within a few days the tinsel and the Christmas cards and the Brazil nuts were all just another check-box on last year's calendar and we were in the Saudi desert.
Now the desert held no fear for me, but it wasn't the kind of fighting I was used to. Street to street, house to house, urban shadows, that's me, and that's where I learned my Ps and Qs in Ireland; and that education served me well in Bosnia when I was the blue hat; or before that even your coarse terrain, yomping over the bog-fields of the Falkland Islands. Give me rough cover, half a shadow, I'm your man. But the flat, trackless desert: not my arena.
Tanks for the desert is the thing. Line up your tanks. Get your air power to fuck over as many of the enemy's tanks as you can before you roll him up. It ain't complicated. But then when you do hit a settlement or defensive position you've got to have your infantry—me—keeping pace with the tanks in armoured Warriors, so's we can dismount and engage at the battle line, mopping up with bullet, grenade and bayonet. That's me. See that bayonet? Don't get to use it very often but I do love to keep it shiny and sharp. That's where I'm happy.
But this was mostly going to be settled by the tanks, not by a bayonet's length. And for the first time since World War One there was serious threat of gas and chemicals. We drilled and drilled and drilled, fixing those spooky chemical hoods in place. Stinking. Hear yourself heavy breathing. All your buddies bug-eyed, trying to see your face behind the mask. Get your jabs at the ready. That's not fighting. But you got to do it.
And it's the fucking boredom of it that can get to you.
We'd finished up the drill one evening and I was standing, dripping with sweat and getting my breath back from bellowing at the lads from behind the mask. The lads were dismissed and I was standing with my hands on my hips looking out at the sky over the flat desert sands.
—What you looking at, Colour Sar'nt? This was a lad called Dorky. Good lad but wouldn't shut up. Used to keep following me round like a little dog. Always asking questions.—What's this? What's that?
—Come 'ere, Dorky. Look out there. What d'you see?
—Nothing, Colour Sar'nt. Nothin' there. Desert, only desert Colour Sar'nt.
—Look again, son.
—Can't see anything. Nuffink.
—Look at that sky. You ever seen a sky that colour?
—No, Sar'nt.
—Not Sar'nt, Colour Sar'nt you little toe-rag. What colour is it, Dorky?
—Pink, Colour Sar'nt.
—It ain't pink, you muppet. Look again.
A few of the other lads trudge by, clutching their sweaty chemical masks, wanting to know what we're looking at.
—Dorky says it's nothing, I says to 'em.—Then he says it's pink, but I says it ain't pink. What colour is that sky?
—Lavender, says Chad, a Black-Country kid.—Innit.
—No, ti'nt lavender, says Brewster, a Liverpool scally, good lad in a fight.—Ti'nt lavender.
Next thing there's seven or eight lads looking into that nothing, trying to decide what colour that nothing is. The truth is I don't know what colour it is. It's the most beautiful sky I ever seen in my life and I don't know what colour to say.
—See that sky, lads? That's why you joined the army. It ain't just to have it out with the Iraqis. It's so you'll see miraculous things. Like that sky.
And I walk away; leaving them scratching their heads. They don't know if I'm taking the piss. Truth: I don't know either. Though I do remember thinking: look at the sky now, lads, cos it's gonna get dark.
Waiting, drilling, waiting, drilling. Saddam has used gas against the Iranians and the Kurds and the marsh Arabs, so we're expecting him to fling a pot of gas in our faces. Real Soon Now, as they say. But it doesn't come. There are a few more sunsets while the air assault makes softening-up runs over the Iraqis occupying Kuwait. It turns out the enemy has no decent air assault to answer with and I'm already thinking this might be a short war.
Where is their air assault? Where is their artillery, lobbing gas and chemicals at us? This is supposed to be the biggest army in the Middle East. What are they doing? Lying in their trenches and sharpening their swords? The waiting is getting our boys nervous. There's only so many times you can tell 'em to look at a pink sky. Lavender.
When they boys talk, all they talk about is what size TV screen they're going to spend their service wages on; and since this is the first war properly televised how they're going to watch it on these big TV sets when they get home. Drives me mad.
—What the fuck for? Like living it ain't enough for you? You want the Hollywood version? The boredom taken out? The dozy rosy ending? You think it's a fucking game show, doncha?
—No, Colour Sergeant.
—Yes you fucking do. Don't
no colour sergeant
me, you muppet.
The serious aerial bombing starts in the middle of January and while that goes on we just have to train and wait. There are a few duels with the artillery but the only attackers are helicopters. The MLRS units are pumping out rockets and with these little bug things—unmanned RPVs—whining in the sky to send coordinates back to our computers so we can throw still more rockets I start to think: that's it, mate. Your type of soldier is redundant, get cashiered, hang your boots up. See—there's nothing coming back. One-sided war if they don't have the technology. Then at the end of January the Iraqis start to stir and they move across the Kuwait border and into Khafji. That don't last long. We're getting rumours that the Iraqi prisoners picked up in Khafji have no stomach for the fight.
By the third week of February the Iraqi divisions have all their supply lines across the Euphrates River bombed to fuck and they are low on food and water. Huge numbers of their tanks and artillery have been smashed. And we're still practising with masks and watching sunsets. It's all good news for us. The ground offensive might be easier than we first thought. But I don't like it. Not war, is it?
I never like it when it's too easy. If it's too easy, it ain't worth it. Ever.
Nobody is more relieved than me when they tell us we're on. Hear that drum? I don't have to be told. I've been listening to our artillery increase its bombardment every day. No one has to tell me. We're going up the Wadi al Batin and then swing right into Kuwait City and even though my lads are looking a bit sick except for Brewster who is well up for it I'm laughing and singing;
Wadi, Wadi, we're going up the Wadi,
and my boys are going:
You're cracked, Colour Sergeant, you are
.
Not cracked. It's just that when I know that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, that's when I'm happiest. Form up. Move out. Press on. 24th of February 1991 and the British 1st Armoured of which we are a part is rolling. Hear the noise of war engines. And guess what? It's overcast, cold and raining. British weather, in the desert. Staffs ride in the hulls of Warriors, just behind the tanks and even though the desert is trackless we move, we bounce and we move.
I'm disappointed not to be part of the first wave. Yank Marine forces have gone under cover of darkness to make paths through the minefields and barriers and first layers of Iraqi defensive positions. After sunrise I begin to hear the gun reports of tank engagement. What I don't know is that the Yanks and the French have struck north to slam the back door on the Iraqis. The enemy have no air reconnaissance by now so can't have known this. No reinforcements and no way out. They've been popped in the oven and we're just about to turn it up to Mark 200. How d'you like your turkey cooked?
It isn't until later in the first day that we swing back eastwards to engage Iraqi armoured troops around the Kuwait border. I have the strange feeling that the war is already over after the first day because we just keep going. Black puffs of smoke drift across the sands and the crump of engagement ahead isn't getting any nearer. We stop to mop up a few emplacements, but besides a few rounds fired off the resistance is feeble. We pick up a few of their troops—conscripts, kids trying to smile at us—and they are all passed back down the line as prisoners of war.
There is no conflict. We can't find it. Just deeper into the desert and thick black smoke billowing around, and a weird stench. I keep thinking: I can see the smoke, I can hear the guns, but where's the war?
We roll on for hours, past burned-out shells of tanks and beetled armoured vehicles, all Iraqi. Flame is still licking from some of the gun turrets, smoke is winding from the guts of engines. Metal is buckled and bent. Vehicles are lodged in the sand, caterpillar wheels buried deep, and dust covers them like they've been there for years. It all has the feel of a battle long over. The only thing that makes you certain it's recent is the occasional burned corpses of soldiers flung from a bombed vehicle. Or half a corpse still in a vehicle, like the bit of the sardine you can't get out of the corner of a sardine tin. We put rounds into every burning tank we pass anyway, either with the 30mm Rarden cannon or we strafe them with the chain gun. Just to be sure. Well, not even that; more out of frustration of having nothing to shoot at.
Doesn't look much like there's going to be any kind of role for us boys. Not that I'm hungry for it, like some of the kids looking for action. I'll do it if it's there to be done, but I've learned enough about the bookkeeping of war. You don't want to get yourself in the red column just by staying too long.
I'm in the turret with the driver. Weird phosphorescent flashes keep popping from miles up ahead, and they're followed by what I want to call a flutter; it's like your eye goes a-quiver for a moment. And there's a smell in the air, nothing like the usual reek of burning and high-ex. And I don't like it. When it comes to combat I don't much like anything I haven't seen or smelled before.
Anyway I'm just thinking we're not going to see much action, and that this war is far off the radar, when we come under fire. Mortar and small arms.
—Rag-heads, 'bout five hundred metres, quarter left, goes my driver Cummings, a snippy little hard-case Bristolian with shit tattoos all over his neck.
—Shove in that dip, quarter right.
There's a dune we try to snuggle in behind. Our vehicle stops dead in the sand and the engines power down. I drag my knuckles across the side of Cummings' head.
—Do not repeat do not let me hear you refer to the enemy as rag-heads towel-heads sand-niggers or any other fucking thing other than the fucking enemy, right Cummings? Right?
—Colour Sar'nt!
They should know that by now. I won't have it. Not in the middle of combat. Down the pub, in the mess or in the whorehouse you can call 'em what the fuck you like. But not here. Won't have it.
—Why not? I ask him.—Why fucking not?
Another mortar falls and there are a couple of pings as bullets strike our AV. The boys in the back think I'm mad. We're under fire and I'm giving them parade-ground drill. But I know the mortars are well short and the bullets are spent when they hit the sides of the Warrior.—Come on! Let's hear it!
—Underestimation of enemy, Colour Sar'nt, says Brewster, at the top of the class.
He's going to say more but I cut him off.—Under-fucking-estimation of enemy! I don't know what we've got here but sitting just behind them is the National Republican Guard. More fucking highly educated than you are, Cummings. Crack fucking soldiers, you cunt. Loyal to Saddam. They are not towel-heads rag-heads or sand-niggers, they are the fucking enemy and you will respect their capacity to blow your fucking balls off, right, Cummings?
—Colour Sar'nt! goes Cummings, red in the cheeks. Another round of bullets ping the Warrior.
—These fucking people invented reading and writing while we were still living in mud huts and dancing round Stone-fucking-henge with blue faces, you got that, Cummings?
—Colour Sar'nt!
Well, that's enough of that. All the lads in the back are looking at me, so I swing down and give 'em a nice big smile, like really I'm just lemonade.—Good lads. Now then, what we got?
Turns out there is a little emplacement dug into the sand, still active behind our front line, and this is just what we're here for. Clean up. Mrs. Overalls. Get the Marigold gloves on, out with the bleach and polish, make the world shine. Our infrared should be able to tell us how many bodies they have dug in but it's on the fucking blink which is normal. All this gear works fine until you need it to run with sand in it; though I suspect these phosphorescent flashes might have something to do with the malfunction. Doesn't matter. Our AV is well equipped to take the enemy out.
The terrain suits us. There's a slight rise on our eastern flank so I can get a couple of lads out there to attack the position while we give covering fire with the cannon. Brewster and Dorky volunteer, as do one or two others. I give them the nod, and then for some reason—I don't know why—I decide I'll go and hold their hands. It's not that they need me. There's just stuff bothering me. Can't put my finger on it at all.
I order the driver to power up and move on fifty yards to fire a couple of white phos-grenades to make a smokescreen so's we can drop out and flit over to get behind the rise, hopefully unnoticed. When we reach the rise we can see a burned-out Iraqi tank on the sand maybe just another hundred yards away. We scope it out. There are bodies, or bits of bodies, lying around it. No life. It's all clear. It's a bit of useful cover and we go up behind it to set up our gear to help the Warrior make its fire on the Iraqi bunker.
—Fucking hell, says Dorky.
He's looking at a torso nearby. Or at least I think it's a torso. But it still has its arms and legs. It's a weird shape. Shrunk. Nasty.