—Never mind what's around you, I bark at him.—Get operational!
But Brewster and Dorky are paralysed by this thing. Mesmerised. It's an effort for them to look away.
—Come on lads, I say, a deep low growl.
Training kicks in, they go to it, fumbling a bit, fidgety, hyper, but they set up. And I look at this thing, but out of the corner of my eye because I don't want the lads to see I'm freaked by it, too. And I am. I'm freaked.
It's a corpse—of a kind—of an Iraqi soldier spilled out of the tank. Part of his head's gone but most of the rest of him is there. Well, I can't see hands and feet. None of that bothers me. I've seen enough bits of bodies in my time and after a while it's no different to what's in your burger. But this thing: it's a body but it's shrunk to maybe a third of the size it should be. It crossed my mind it might be a kid, but it's bearded and anyway it's not like it's a kid, it's like the whole thing has twisted like a plastic bag when you set fire to it. And it's left a spooky shadow behind, a man-shaped shadow on the sand.
The boys are set up and ready, but I've got to shift this bloody mess. I step over to the thing and I try to side-foot it under the tank, out of eyesight, but my foot passes straight through part of it. Nothing turns my stomach. My guts are cast iron, but for the first time in years and years my bowels soften. Some of the thing sticks to my foot. I scrape sand and debris and push as much of it as I can under the tank.
I turn back. Dorky and Brewster are watching me now.—All set up, lads?
—Colour Sar'nt!
Brewster radios the Warrior and we watch the slow elevation of the canon before it locks. There's a pause before the Warrior launches its bombardment of the Iraqi emplacement. Dorky watches the results through binoculars and reports what's happening. I have to make a mental effort not to think about this goo stuck to my boot.
—Give 'em a strafing.
—Chain gun! Brewster tells his radio.
There's not much more. After the cannon and chain gun have softened them up they come out and all we have to do is point our weapons. These are not Republican Guard. These are conscripts; they've had enough and they're stumbling out with their hands on their heads. They seem to think we're the Yanks. Their idea of being a prisoner is to try to talk to us in Iraqi.
After the prisoners are passed back down the line the mopping -up pattern is repeated. The only thing that's changed is the dust. The tanks and the armoured vehicles are kicking up so much dust and sand that it's getting hard to see further up ahead. We're proceeding pretty much by radio coordinates and infrared activity. We stop a couple of times to check out a destroyed tank or other vehicle and we keep spotting these shrunk plastic bodies, with their shadow-casts, and all the time I'm thinking: what weapon is it that shrinks a human being but doesn't destroy a tank? I mean, the tanks are burned but the shell is intact. I have to break up little groups of boys standing mesmerised over these shrunk bodies.
—Don't look at it, lads. Press on.
About another ten kilometres ahead we get radio directed to another clear-up. Same as before: a few salvoes to loosen the sand around them then in we go. The Iraqis are pouring out like ants from a poisoned nest, but I don't want my boys to get complacent. There are always die-hards, and I want no rush. By the book, me, and I'm dedicated to bringing all my boys home with their trousers on.
The dust and the sand are being swirled around by a strong breeze coming from the east. It smells of spice and engine smoke and this other stuff I don't like, and it's choking so we have to go in now with scarves over our faces, just to stop your nose and mouth filling up. This time I peel off with five of my boys, Dorky and Brewster amongst them. From somewhere up ahead there's sniper fire coming at us, but it's being fired pretty wildly into the dust. We get down behind an escarpment.
They know the drill. I'm going out very wide; they're going to crawl on their bellies at spread intervals but stay in visual range, using the dust-storm as cover. Meanwhile I've got my other boys noising up the Warrior's chain gun to draw fire and support our attack.
I yomp off maybe three hundred metres wide. I can hear the report of the sniper as he fires on the Warrior, but I can't see him. The dust gets thicker. There's a strong breeze picking up and I can't tell how much of this dust is generated by vehicle movement and how much is a natural wind-blown sandstorm, but it's swirling and lashing about like a sand-lizard's tail.
I look across the line. The dust is so strong I can barely see Brewster, who is my nearest support. I wave at him. He sees me and I point to my eye, warning him to stay in visual range with me and the next man. I don't want to be shot by my own troops: happens all the time in combat. Brewster gives me the thumbs up to show he understands.
We make slow progress towards the Iraqi emplacement. They're still firing, infrequently and wildly. I have an instinct there's only one or two of them, maybe three hundred metres away. I'm going on my belly.
Then the dust whips up again suddenly and aggressively. You can actually see the sand in the air turning in spirals, a whip-o'-will, a dark thing, like a live creature, part smoke, part sand. And the dust is so thick I've lost sight of Brewster.
If he remembers his training he'll stay exactly where he is until we re-establish visual range. But at the moment I can't see more than maybe seven or eight metres ahead of me in the gritty yellow fog. We're all radio disarmed: nothing like somebody squawking through your set when you're on your belly six inches away from the enemy. Maybe I could use the radio safely with this wind and racket going on but I don't want to risk it. We wait. Behind the wind I can hear our artillery pounding the Iraqi dugouts a few miles ahead. Then I can't even hear that.
After a while the sandstorm begins to ease. I have a thin cotton scarf over my mouth and it's almost stiff with the dust logged in it. My eyes are stinging and sweat is dribbling along the curve of my spine. I'm scoping out the spot where I last saw Brewster, but even though the dust is clearing I can't see him or anyone else.
What I can see is the Iraqi dugout, and I'm way nearer to it than I should be. There's no activity. The dugout has taken a direct hit and there are bodies spilled. There's still no sign of Brewster and should one single rifleman remain in the dugout, I'm exposed.
I have two grenades. An L2 high-ex, and a white-phosphorous grenade. I decide to use the phos-bomb because as well as clearing anything within fifteen yards of where it lands it makes a good signal. I chuck it at the dugout and get down, keeping my eyes averted from the flash to avoid the after-dazzle. The thing goes off and the smoke rises pretty quickly. Anything coming out of the dugout is going to walk straight into my line of fire.
But there's nothing there.
I hang in, still waiting to make eye contact with any of my boys. Visibility in the dust is fluctuating at between maybe twenty to thirty yards, no more than that, and after the shock of my phos-grenade everything is quiet. I can't even hear the artillery up ahead and the flyovers have stopped altogether. I decide to wake up the radio.
My radio, like all of them in our unit, is a piece of shit twenty years old and it's fucked and we've reported it fucked and got no replacement gear. I have to make several calls before someone in my Warrior picks me up.
—Who's that? I ask.
—Fox, where are you?
—I'm at the dugout. Where's Echo and Valiant? These are the call signs for Brewster and Cummings: normal names are prohibited over the radio.
—They've lost you, Cobra.
—Did you see my flash?
—Flash?
—Phos-bomb, you fucking idiot. You couldn't fucking miss it. If you can't raise Echo and Valiant send me two other lads to clear this dug out.
This is bad radio procedure. Normal conversation is also prohibited but we're on a closed net at short range and I'm getting mighty irritated with everything.
—No flash, Cobra. Give me your last coordinates.
I sit back and wait. The thick yellow cloud of sand and dust is like a gas, a sulphurous fog, and I still can't see more than about thirty yards. No one comes. I radio again.
—We can't find you, Cobra.
—For fuck's sake. I'm gonna lob my high-ex. Follow the fucking bang, you useless twat!
—Colour Sar'nt.
I do just that. If there was anything alive in the dug out it's probably mince by now. I radio again.
—No bang, Colour Sar'nt.
—What?
—No bang. We're looking. We're listening. Sit tight.
I wait for another half an hour. What bothers me is that there is no sound from anywhere in the desert. Pretty unusual, I'd say, what with a war going on. The distant artillery has stopped. It doesn't make sense. I radio again but this time I can't get a signal at all.
My instincts convince me that the dugout is clear up ahead. I do what I tell my boys never to do and I make a solo approach. Not because I'm feeling brave but because I'm bored. I'm in the middle of combat and I'm bored, and when I'm bored I start thinking too much and that scares me more than the enemy.
The dugout is well sandbagged and there is a big, black broken gun blasted halfway over the sandbags. I can smell the oil and the ripped steel. I approach silently, slowly from the rear. The dugout is clean. When I say clean, I mean there are no live enemy. Plenty of dead ones. Nothing done by my grenades though, because they're all shrunk, shrivelled bodies like I've seen before. Shrunk with their original shadows scorched into the dust. Scattered particles of my WP are still smoking, but no one's going anywhere.
I kick over the mess cans and check round. There's nothing of useful intelligence and I need to return to my unit. The problem is I don't know where my unit is and my radio is still on the blink. I go outside the dugout to climb the rise to see if I can get a better signal. Maybe ten yards from the sandbags I hear a click.
Things that never happen in real life: you see those war movies, maybe Vietnam, where a soldier steps on a mine and they cut to the expression on his face as he realises what he's done. There's a pause. Boom!
Nah. Doesn't happen. You step on a modern mine and there's no pause and you've no face left to have an expression. You know nothing about it.
But I step on something and there's a loud click. I don't know what it is, but I can feel a metal plate under my foot. I've trodden on something and I've triggered a spring-release mechanism.
I have no idea what this is. It may be a mine, it may be an improvised booby trap. But I know that if I don't keep my foot down on it, it's going to blow my leg off, and maybe a lot more. The point is I'm stuck. I'm not going anywhere.
Now this is an interesting situation. With the yellow smog, visibility is still down to about twenty yards or so, but should any Iraqis come stumbling through that dust I'm a dead man. Should I lift my foot I'm a dead man. I can't see what it is I've trodden on but I can certainly feel the hard metal shape under my size-nine boot. Maybe it's a mine that has malfunctioned. Maybe it's some old piece of crap the Iraqis had left over from their desert war with Iran, and it's not going to blow. I have no way of knowing.
I feel a maggot of sweat run along my spine. My mouth is full of dust. Keeping my foot in place I get on the radio. Miraculously I patch through at the first attempt.
—Cobra. Where are you?
—Listen carefully. I've stepped on a mine.
—Fuck! Are you all right.
—No, listen. It hasn't gone off. I've got my foot on it and I can't go anywhere or it will detonate.
—Fuck! Don't move your foot.
—You dickhead! I'm not moving my foot anywhere. But I need you to find me pronto. I need someone to work out how to get me out of this.
—Colour Sar'nt. What are your coordinates?
—Exactly what I gave you last time.
—Can't be, Colour Sar'nt. We've been all over there looking for you.
—Speak with Brewster. He was the last man I saw.
—Exactly what we did, Colour Sar'nt.
—Well fucking do it again! I'm getting a bit fucking warm out here, Corporal!
—Colour Sar'nt!
—I'll fire three rounds, wait fifteen seconds and then fire a further three rounds. You listen for me.
—Won't be easy in this noise, Colour Sar'nt.
And I'm thinking, what noise? There is no noise. The desert is completely silent. Then I realise at the back of Corporal Middleton's radio voice I can hear artillery booming. I end radio contact and I fire three rounds into the air. I count to fifteen and do the same again. I try to radio Middleton to get confirmation but all I get on the airwaves is angry static.
Hoping they can locate me from my gunfire I wait. With my hot foot on the mine.
In the heat and dust of the desert, in full combat gear, with the sweat trickling inside my helmet, my vest and in my groin, I wait and I wait. And no one comes.
I'm on alert and my automatic rifle is primed in case an Iraqi turns up out of the dust and spots me standing there. I think about getting down on one knee to give my limbs a break; but I'm afraid that the slightest easing of pressure from the spring-mechanism will detonate the mine. Eventually I have to do something and I do lower myself on one knee, but only by resting my gun arm across the thigh bearing over the mine and forcing my entire weight down on that leg.
I stay in this position for over two hours. The radio crackles with static but nothing else. At one point I lose my patience and bellow out loud.—Brewster! Where are you, you little shite-hawk? Brewster!
Nothing. No one. Not even a sound. My leg is cramping up badly so I return to my standing position. By now I've run through every possibility for getting myself out of this. I have the weight of my pack, equipment and weapon, but I can't risk manipulating it all onto the mine in the hope that it is heavy enough. With gear weighing roughly fifty pounds I even try to make a calculation, but I have no way of knowing what force I'm currently bearing on the mine under my foot. I reckon that if and when the boys turn up they will have the gear to clamp the mine, or to weight it, or to get me out of my boot somehow without the thing triggering.