The only thing we could think of was that we were a search and rescue team. These teams came as quite a big package, especially when the Americans were out to rescue one of their downed pilots. The pilots had a TACBE (tactical beacon) which transmitted on the international distress frequency, which AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) continuously listened to and got a fix on. Of course, everybody else was listening in as well, including the Iraqis. AWACS would locate the pilot from his beacon and relay the message. A search and rescue mission would then be stood to (made ready). The package would be a heli with an extraction party of eight to ten men ready to give covering fire from the air, with machine guns mounted on the helicopter. The party might even be joined by a couple of Apache attack helicopters giving cover so that the bigger helicopter could come down and do the snatch. There would probably be top cover as well, a couple of jets like A10s to add to the hosing down if needed. There was a big emphasis on getting people back, and so there should be. Then you know that if you get in the shit, there’ll be every effort made to come and save you, especially if you’re a pilot. It’s good for morale and flying efficiency, and quite apart from anything else there’s the purely financial angle-millions of pounds’ worth of training have gone into every single pilot.

The Iraqis would be aware of these big rescue packages, and of the fact that inside the pickup helicopter there would be a medical team, mainly for trauma management. We were about the right numbers, and we would be dressing more or less uniformly. Contrary to common belief, we don’t all walk around in what we like. You need a form of recognition so your own troops can identify you. You don’t want to be shot by your own side: that’s rather unprofessional. So for this sort of op you resemble some form of soldier.

Because it was just normal PE4 that we would be carrying, we could say it was for our own protection-that sometimes we had to man an RV point while AWACS talked the downed pilot on to us. In such a case we’d put local protection out. “They’ve given us all this stuff,” we would say, “but we don’t really have a clue how to use it.”

Everybody had medical experience. The whole Regiment is trained to a high standard. Chris, being a patrol medic, was partly NHS (National Health Service) trained. Stan, of course, had a medical degree and a year of clinical experience. Search and Rescue is concerned mainly with trauma management, so people of our standard would be involved.

The TACBEs would blend in with our story, but in my heart of hearts I knew it wouldn’t hold up for long, especially if we were caught with the cache equipment. We knew we wouldn’t get more than two or three days out of the story, but that would be long enough for the Head Shed to do their assessment of the damage we could do to OP SEC What do they know? our Head Shed would ask-and how can it affect our future operations? They would have to assume that everything we knew, we would have told. That’s why we are only told what we need to know-for our own good as well as everybody else’s. At best, we’d just be giving them time.

It was about six o’clock in the evening now and time for another break. The room really stank, and you could see the signs of strain on people’s faces. We went and had a scoff, and for a change we all sat together. Normally you’d be off with your own mates and doing your own thing.

“I was in the doghouse for watching Apocalypse Now on the box the night before we left,” Vince said as he stirred his coffee.

“Me too,” Mark said. “But there was nothing else to do: the pubs were shut.”

Most people had experienced that same horrible lull when it was the early hours of the morning and they were just sitting there and waiting. Jilly and I had spent the day and night in strained silence. Only Bob had had a different time of it, boogying the night away at the club, rather badly as usual, apparently.

We talked about how good the task was and how much we were looking forward to getting on the ground, but the excitement was tempered a bit by the thought of how isolated we would be. We knew it was risky, but it wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last-after all, this was what we were paid for. We filled our flasks ready for the next session.

The mood was more lighthearted now as I summarized twelve hours of planning.

“Right. We fly in by Chinook to a OOP (drop off point) twenty kilometers south of the MSR, then tab one night, maybe two, depending on the terrain and population, to the LUP-cum-cache. From there we’ll carry out recce patrols to locate the landline. This hunt might take two or three nights: we just don’t know until we get on the ground. Initially we will be preoccupied with finding the landline, but at the same time we’ll OP (put an observation post on) the MSR, watching for Scud movement. If we see the world’s supply of Scud moving along the MSR, we will assess and call in an air strike. If we see a Scud launch, we’ll take a bearing, locate it, recce, then carry out a target attack. We’ll then move back to the LUP and carry on with our tasking. All of this is very flexible until we get on the ground. We might get a Scud launch on our very first night. But we’ll do nothing about it until we are firmly in an LUP-cum-cache position. There’s no point screaming ‘banzai!” and getting our arse kicked just for the sake of a bit of bravado and a solitary Scud. Better to take our time and do more damage. So we sort ourselves out, then we go and give it max. After fourteen days we’ll exfiltrate to a pickup point prearranged with the aircrew before we infil, or we will give them an RV with our Sit Rep. They will come and either resupply us and redeploy us, or bring us back for re tasking All very simple really.”

And so it was. You must keep things that way if you can; then there’s less to forget and less to go wrong. If a plan has many facets and depends on split second timing-and sometimes it does-it’s more likely to fuck up. Plenty of plans have to be like this, of course, but you must always try to keep it simple. Keep it simple, keep it safe.

We had a patrol radio for com ms between the FOB (forward operating base) in Saudi and the patrol. There was unlikely to be room for a spare because of the weight. Having just one was no problem because we were working as one patrol. We also had four TACBEs; it would have been ideal to have one each, but the kit just wasn’t available. They are dual-purpose devices. Pull one tab out, and it transmits a beacon which is picked up by any aircraft.

“I remember a story about a unit in Belize,” I said. “Not from the Regiment, but they were jungle training. They were issued with TACBEs while they were in the jungle. One officer put his TACBE in his locker, and as he put it in, the tab of the distress beacon was pulled out and set off. Commercial aircraft were radioing in, everybody was running around. It took two days for them to find the beacon in his locker.”

“Dickhead.”

Pull out another tab, and you can use it like a normal radio, speaking within a limited range to aircraft overhead. You can also use TACBE to communicate with each other on the ground-a system known as working one-to-one-but it has to be line of sight and has a limited range. Its main use, however, would be to talk to AWACS if we were in trouble. We were informed that AWACS would be giving us twenty-four hour coverage and would answer our call within fifteen seconds. It was comforting to know that there’d be someone talking back to us in that nice, sedate, polite voice that AWACS always use to calm down pilots in distress. The problem was, TACBE was very easily DF’d (detected by direction-finding equipment). We’d only use it in an emergency, or if everything was going to rat shit on the air strikes.