We checked our belt kit, making sure all pouches were done up so that we didn’t lose anything as we ran. Mags on tight? Check them again. Safety catch on and weapon made ready? Of course they were but we checked them anyway. We closed down the two tubes of our 66s and slotted them together to make them easy to carry. We didn’t bother to replace the end-caps or sling, just slipped the weapon between our webbing straps, ready for quick use.

We checked that spare magazines were ready to pull out. Pick them up the wrong way, and you waste a precious second or two turning them around. Put them in your belt kit with the curve the right way up, and they’re ready to slap into place. A lot of people put a tab of masking tape on the mag to make it easier to pull out. When my mags were empty, I’d throw them down the front of my smock for refilling later. We could use the rounds from the belts of the Minimi.

All this took a couple of minutes, but it was time better spent than just getting up and running. They knew we were there, so why rush? The stags would tell us if they were coming.

Legs had got straight onto the radio. He went outrageous, running out all the antennas, trying different combinations that he hadn’t been able to try while we were concealed. Now we were compromised, he could do anything he wanted. If the message got through, they could send some fast jets over. We could talk to the pilots on TACBE and get some fire down, which would all be rather pleasant.

Legs’s water was done for him. While he was bent over, the radio blokes opened his belt kit, took the water bottles out, and let him drink before they filled them up again, and threw more food into his belt kit. When he sensed that we’d run out of time, he dismantled the kit and packed it at the top of his bergen.

“Instructions are in my right-hand map pocket in my trousers,” he told everybody. “Radio’s on top of my bergen.” All of it was a well-established SOP so that if he went down we’d be able to retrieve the equipment quickly, but he was going by the book to ensure that everybody knew.

When he was ready, Legs replaced Bob on stag. There was an air of acceptance by everybody, the calm of well-practiced drills being followed to the letter. Bob, who’d done nothing but sleep since we’d arrived, was worried about having to move again so soon.

“We ought to have a union,” he said. “These hours are scandalous.”

“Food’s fucking crap and all,” said Mark.

The jokes were good to hear because they relaxed the situation.

Dinger got his fags out. “Fuck it, they know we’re here. I might as well have a smoke. I could be dead in a minute.”

“I’ll put you on a fizzer!” Vince shouted as he went out and took over from Stan on the Minimi. It was a standard piss-taking joke, referring to a piece of army slang that people think is said but which in fact is never heard.

Everybody was ready to move if necessary. It had taken us a total of three minutes. There was about an hour and a half of daylight left. Our best weapon had been concealment, but the boy had disarmed us. Where we were, we couldn’t fight. It was such a closed environment that it would take just one or two HE rounds to hose us down. The only option was to get out into the open and fight, or maybe get away. We were in the shit if we stayed where we were, and we were in the shit if we were out in the open because there was no cover. It was out of the frying pan into the fire, but at least in the fire we had a slim chance.

The rumble of the tracked vehicle came from the south. We couldn’t get out of the wadi now; it was too late. Our only exit was blocked by this armored vehicle. We would just have to stand there and fight.

I couldn’t understand why they were bringing an APC down in this small, confined space. Surely they would take it for granted that we’d have anti armor weapons?

We snapped open our 66s and ran around to find a decent firing position. Chris pranced around with his old German Afrika Corps hat on, pointing at our 66s and talking to us like the world’s most patient instructor. “Now boys, remember the backblast! Do, please, remember the backblast! This face has got to go downtown on a Saturday night. The last thing it needs is a peppering!”

Stan stared down the sights of his cocked Minimi at the line of the watershed, towards the sound of the tracked vehicle. It trundled closer. There was a glint of metal as it came into view. What in hell’s name was it? It didn’t look like the APC I had been expecting.

Stan shouted: “Bulldozer!”

Unbelievable. A major drama was about to erupt and this idiot was pottering about with a digger. It came to within 500 feet of our position, but the driver never saw us. He was dressed in civilian clothes. He must have been there quite innocently.

“Don’t fire,” I said. “We’ve got to take it as a compromise, but what sort of compromise we don’t know yet.”

The driver’s attention seemed focused on finding a way out of the wadi.

He maneuvred this way and that for what seemed an eternity.

“Fuck it,” I said to Vince, “we need to go. We just can’t sit here.”

The ideal would have been to wait for last light, but I sensed that the situation was going to get out of hand.

The bulldozer disappeared suddenly, and the engine noise faded. The driver must have found the gap he was looking for.

It was time to go. I told Stan to bring in the blokes on the Minimis so everybody could hear what I was going to say. We huddled around with our belt kit on and our berg ens at our feet. It was a vulnerable time because everybody was so close together, but it had to be done: everybody had to know what was going on.

I started by staring the obvious. “We’re going to move from here,” I said. “We’re going to go west, try to avoid the AA guns, and then head south and go for the RV with the helicopter. The helicopter RV will be at 0400 tomorrow.”

“See you in the Pudding Club,” Chris said.

“Fuck that,” Dinger said in his terrible W. C. Fields voice. “Go west, young man, go west.”

We shouldered our berg ens and rechecked our belt kit. The rest of it was left behind. Even the claymores remained because we didn’t have time to pick them up.

Because of the S60 sites, there was only one way out. West, then south, using dips in the ground as much as we could. But we wouldn’t rush it. We didn’t want to make mistakes. We had loads of time to make the heli RV, if we could only get out of this shit and get under cover of darkness.

I was feeling apprehensive but comfortable. We deserved better after all the hard work of planning, tabbing in, locating and confirming the MSR, and just the bad luck of lost com ms I’d thought we’d cracked it: we only had to wait until 0400 the next morning and we’d be back in business. But at the end of the day, we were an 8-man fighting patrol, we had guns, we had bullets, we had 66s. What more could a man ask for?

“Come on,” said Mark, “let’s make like rag heads.”

We pulled our shamags over our faces. The sun was in our eyes as I led us out in single file. We patrolled properly, taking our time, observing the ground.

The wadi petered out and became flat plain. We came out west, using the lie of the ground, then turned left, heading south.

I kept checking to the north because I didn’t want us to get in line with the antiaircraft guns. With every step I expected to hear a 57mm round zinging past my head. What was keeping them? Didn’t they believe the boy? Were they waiting for reinforcements? Or just waiting to get up the bottle to attack?

We patrolled further west for another five minutes, keeping distance between each man to minimize casualties in the event of a major drama. It was the correct thing to do, but if a contact happened up front, the man at the rear would have to run maybe 200 feet to catch up if required, depending on the action taken.