Authors: Dan Mills
Travelling from Iraq to Kuwait was like crossing a 200-year time warp. The difference between the two countries was phenomenal. One second you're on a crappy single-lane potholed road out of the early nineteenth century, then suddenly it turns into a six-carriageway motorway from the twenty-first century, with knobs on.
In a flash, all the mud huts and filth had gone. Everything in Kuwait was brand new and clean. Every house was tiled and looked to be made from marble, and its people were happy and well dressed. It was an acute reminder of what happens when one country spends its oil money for
twenty-five years on infrastructure, and the other blows it on war. Kuwait is what Iraq should have looked like. We were impressed; Saddam must have tried seriously hard to fuck his country quite to the state that he did.
We stopped just after the border at a British military post to change into the civvies that we'd brought with us and hand over our weapons and ammunition. It's always a good feeling when you can pull on a pair of jeans after months on end in combat fatigues. Then it was down to the US Army's Camp Doha, in the desert just to the north of Kuwait City. Endless rows of small prefab blocks that doubled up as holiday chalets, each filled with four bunk beds and nicely air conditioned. It wasn't just Brits there, the whole of the 150,000-strong US military from all over Iraq took it in turns to do their operational stand downs at the camp too.
If you're ever in doubt of the size of the US footprint in Iraq, go to Camp Doha. The place blew our minds. It had everything: great big cinemas, enormous gyms, Burger King, Pizza Hut, coffee shops, indoor shopping malls, soccer pitches, the works. It made our own Shaibitha look like a little corner shop. Just going on a wander and a gawp was a great unwind in itself. To us, mundane snippets of normal life that you wouldn't blink at in the UK were utterly fascinating. There were even some decent looking birds around the place, either American servicewomen or civilian contractors. We tried hard not to gawp at them too. The only thing the place lacked was booze. But it was so stupidly hot, you didn't really fancy waking up with a hangover anyway.
Inside the giant Naafi the size of a department store (Yanks call it the PX) was everything you could ever possibly want for service in Iraq. Videos, TVs, stereos, duvets, towels, clothes, rucksacks, boots, tents, laptops, mouse pads, video cameras, PlayStations, Xboxes, gun holsters – the lot. American
ican soldiers did whole year-long tours in Iraq rather than just the six or seven months we had to do, the poor sods. We looked on in pity as they filled up their trolleys to the brim for the long haul.
Des broke the muffled calm of the place with a shout I heard from the other end of the shop.
'Hey, Oost, man, over here! You've got to check out the fucking hardware they've got!'
He'd found the knife section. He was in heaven. It had every blade and serrated edge he'd ever dreamed of. Even some that he hadn't. The South Africans are a lot like the Americans with their shared fascination with guns and killing tools, just a little bit more bloodthirsty.
We also had a good old laugh at their rows and rows of T-shirts. Nobody does T-shirt slogans quite like the US military, and none of them were ironic. 'Who's yer Bag-daddy' was a common one. On another, there was a cartoon picture of a mean looking GI holding out a tin can with the words '100% genuine Whoop Ass' written on it. In a speech bubble coming out of the cartoon GI's mouth was the phrase, 'Don't make me open it.'
Des and Oost bought matching sniper T-shirts, which they cherished from that day onwards. A dirty great big rifle barrel poked out from the design on the front. On the back was printed the slogan, 'Never run from a sniper. You will only die tired.'
That night, we stuffed our faces with burgers. The next morning I woke up feeling like shit; just totally exhausted, and I knew I was coming down with something. Typical. I get ill just when I go on a bit of a holiday.
I spent most of that day in bed. On the next, I felt a bit better so I joined the boys on a sightseeing trip into Kuwait City. It's not an amazing place, with the only real landmark
being its twin giant conical water towers. We took a few pictures and hung out on the city's long sandy beaches, because I was still feeling ropey.
After another night of face-stuffing for the boys, while I looked on jealously, it was back up to Al Amarah. Before we set off, there was the obligatory final trip to the jumbo PX where the guys stocked up on as many consumables as they could carry. That meant dozens of bags of salted beef jerky to crates of Coke and platoon-size pouches of American chewing tobacco. We barely all fitted in around the stash. Des and Oost munched throughout the whole journey up, and by the end they were feeling as sick as parrots.
There was a familiar face waiting for us back in Cimic.
After pestering every military doctor in the UK to declare him fit for duty, Daz had finally succeeded. He got himself on the very next plane back out. We greeted him with a lot of warm handshakes, and no small amount of piss taking. Just what he had been expecting.
'Sorry you've missed all the fun, mate. We were a little bit busy while you were lying on your fat arse in some cosy hospital bed.'
'I was gutted, fucking gutted, Danny. I was getting all the sit reps in the hospital. Seething I was, you should have seen me. I just hope you slotted the fucker who got me.'
'Don't worry, mate. I think there's a fairly high chance of that, at one stage or another.'
Daz was technically the 2i/c of the platoon again, but he and Chris ended up doing the job together after his return. There was a lot Daz had to catch up on, and he was the first to give way to Chris's enormous experience.
Despite everything the platoon had been through since April, it was funny to think that Daz had still not fired his weapon in anger once. He'd never even got the chance – he
was blown up in the very first attack on us. The last thing he remembered before the morphine kicked in was getting his ammo stripped off him.
Not that any of us had any idea at that moment, but he was about to get his chance.
Daz had got back just in the nick of time. So had we. Within a few days, Y Company was going to need every man it could get. One hundred and six British soldiers' lives would depend on exactly how hard we were prepared to fight.
Two days after we got back from Kuwait, I still felt shit from whatever it was I'd got. Corky the company medic sent me very reluctantly back to Slipper City for a proper medical. I hated going back there, even if I was ill.
I checked myself in at the Regimental Aid Post, a single-storey concrete building. The female nurse there told me I was exhausted.
'But I've just come back from my OSD, I can't be. We haven't done anything for bloody weeks.'
'Doesn't matter. You've probably had this coming on for a while. You've got a viral exhaustion infection. Good old fashioned rest is the only way you're going to sort this one out, Sergeant. There are a few ward tents next door that are totally empty at the moment. Why don't you take yourself off there and get some proper sleep?'
She gave me some pills.
'Take as much time as you need. I don't want to see you again until you're feeling a lot better.'
There was a knock on the door, and an orderly popped his head round it.
'Ambulance coming in from Cimic House with a head injury, ma'am. Half an hour.'
I sat up. 'Cimic?'
'Yeah. There's been some sort of accident. That's all we know at the moment.'
Cimic, shit. Was it someone from Snipers? The nurse read my mind.
'No, Sergeant, there's no point in you waiting around for that. There's nothing you can do for anyone in the state you're in anyway. Go on, off you go.'
She was right. I stumbled over to the tents, popped her pills and slept for two solid days. I woke up feeling right as rain on the morning of 6 August, the day of my thirty-sixth birthday. I also woke up in a world that had changed considerably since I last saw it.
Moqtada al-Sadr had fed us the mother of all shit sandwiches.
After a couple of months at playing the politician, he'd discovered that democracy wasn't really his bag after all. He finally threw all his toys out of the pram during a row about how many delegates he was allowed to bring to a national conference to decide how Iraq would elect a new government. He pulled out of the whole process, helpfully branding it 'a sick joke on the Iraqi people'.
Flexing his muscles a little more, Moqtada then issued a series of violent threats at what he and his people might do if he didn't get his way. The rabble rousing was a blatant challenge to the new and unstable government's authority. It was also a clear breach of the peace agreement he had signed, and the Americans weren't standing for it.
On 3 August, the Yanks had tried to nip any trouble in the bud before the streets exploded again. They wanted to avoid the mistakes they had made in April. A company of US Marines and truckloads of Iraqi police were dispatched to al-Sadr's home in Najaf to arrest him. It was the worst thing they could have done.
Moqtada had guessed the Americans were coming. On arrival, the Marines were greeted by heavy gunfire, mortar shelling and a barrage of RPGs, courtesy of hundreds of Mehdi Army fighters who were already defending the house.
Quickly, the clashes spread to the old city of Najaf. There, al-Sadr's fighters had already taken up well-fortified positions around the great Imam Ali mosque.
Round Two was well and truly on. This time, however, it began with one very important difference.
In his passionate plea for jihad to all Iraqi Shia the next day, Moqtada put it about that the Americans had invaded Najaf to destroy the Imam Ali mosque, as a punishment for him not coming quietly. This wasn't true, but it was easily the most inflammatory thing Moqtada could possibly say.
The sprawling, golden-façaded Imam Ali mosque is the most holy site of all for the Shia. Not only is it their Vatican, it's also the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed's son-in-law Ali, the man who led the factional split from Sunni Muslims to create the Shia faith. When Ali was murdered at prayer in 661 AD, he became the Shia's most important martyr and from then onwards almost as highly revered as Mohammed himself. There was no greater insult to the Shia than to destroy this sacred spot at which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims paid homage every year.
In short, a threat to the Imam Ali mosque was seen by them as a threat to Shia Islam's very survival.
Thanks to their itchy trigger fingers, the US military's reputation for heavy-handedness had been well established in Iraq by August 2004. Moqtada's legions of followers believed every word he told them. They soon whipped themselves up into an extraordinary state of fanatical religious fervour.
Redders was also back at Abu Naji having to do a stint in the battle group Ops Room. He had come to the Regimental Aid Post to give me an update on what was going on.
'Put it this way, Danny, threatening the Imam Ali mosque
is like waving a giant blood-red flag with bells on it in front of a seriously histrionic bull with a persecution complex. It's Moqtada's nuclear button, and he's fucking well pressed it.'
'I see.' Clearly it wasn't going to be much of a birthday.
From the peace and quiet of just two days ago, reports were now flooding into the Ops Room of serious trouble all over the country. Coalition forces had come under heavy attack again in the poor Shia suburbs of Baghdad and across all the major southern cities: Nasiriyah, Kut, Kufa and Diwaniya. Basra too was once more in flames. The Mehdi Army there had tried to take control of strategic buildings and were fighting open gun battles with British troops in the streets.
Now it would be nice to say that the people of Al Amarah rose above all the tosh being spoken by Moqtada, and got on quietly with their everyday lives. But if they'd done that, they wouldn't have been the people of Al Amarah. The city was as bad as anywhere. From what it looked like in Abu Naji, possibly worse.
Within hours of the Moqtada pronouncement, the city's mosques began broadcasting a furious call to arms. Thousands were out on the streets in angry protests, and the OMS were in the middle of it all, frantically rabble rousing and sinisterly mobilizing at equal pace. The shooting started almost immediately.
Redders also told me about the head casualty that had come in from Cimic. It wasn't a sniper. It was Ray, the cheeky but lovable private from Mortar Platoon. Ray the Mortar Magnet. He was dead.
'Ray? Jesus, poor guy. How the fuck did that happen?'
'It's unbelievable, Danny. As soon as the trouble started, the Iraqi Army who were manning the front gate fucked
straight off. We had to put Ray and a couple of other lads on it instead. It was kicking off pretty badly in town. The OC's rover group in a couple of Snatches came screaming back in and Ray raised the metal barrier on the chicanes to let them in.
'You know the metal chain you use to pull the bloody thing up and down with? The cheese cutter pole on top of one of the Snatches caught it as it went past. That yanked the barrier straight back down right on Ray's head. It must have pretty much killed him on the spot. Don't think he knew anything about it. Which is something, I suppose.'
What a pathetic waste. After all we'd been through, Ray was killed in a stupid little accident like that. It wasn't anybody's fault, but it was the first fatality the battle group had suffered and it was a bitter blow.
Soldiers understand losses in combat, because that's what happens in war. We're all big boys and we know the risks. To lose someone so needlessly like that though was gutting. Ray especially, who'd shaken off everything the OMS had thrown at him. He was their casualty all right, albeit in a more oblique way. Of that we were all sure.
'There's more, Dan,' Redders continued. 'The OMS even managed to cut short a little memorial service organized for Ray yesterday. Just as the padre was saying his bit, the first round of a mortar barrage landed on the cookhouse roof. Everyone had to scarper for cover.'