I started to shake.

“What do we do-take his kit off?” I asked Chris.

“No, it’s all he’s got on, apart from his trousers, shirt, and smock. If we take it off, he’ll be in a worse state.”

Stan got up and started moving around. We gave him another ten minutes to get himself organized; then it became too cold to stand still any longer and we had to get moving.

We had to do our planning around the two slowest and move at their speed. I changed the order of the march. I put Chris up front, with Stan and Vince behind him. I followed them, with the others behind me.

As scout, Chris moved on the compass bearing and used the night sight to make sure that we weren’t going to walk into anything nasty. We stopped every half hour instead of every hour. Each time, we had to get more water into Stan. The situation was not desperate, but he did seem to be getting worse.

The weather had become diabolical. We weren’t tabbing as hard as we had been because the cold was sapping our strength. The wind was driving into our faces and we were all moving with our heads turned at half cock to try and protect ourselves.

We pushed on, our pace dictated by the two injured men in front. At one stop Vince sat down and gripped his leg.

“It’s getting worse, mate,” he said. It was so out of character for him to complain. The injured leg must have been agony. He apologized for the hassle he was causing us.

We had two enemies now-time and the physical condition of the two slowest men. By now the rest of us were starting to feel the effects of the night’s march as well. My feet and legs were aching, and I had to keep reminding myself that it was what I got paid for.

There was total cloud cover. It was jet-black. I checked the navigation, and the rest of the patrol covered the arcs to the sides and the rear. Chris was having trouble with the NVA because there was no ambient light. This was now slowing us down as much as the two injured men.

The wind bit into every inch of exposed skin. I kept my arms tight against my sides to preserve warmth. My head was down, my shoulders shrugged. If I had to move my head, I’d rum my whole body. I didn’t want the slightest bit of wind down my neck.

We started to hear aircraft coming from the north. I couldn’t see a thing because of the cloud cover, but I had to make a decision. Was I going to get on the TACBE, only to find they were Iraqi?

“Fucking yeah,” Mark said, reading my thoughts. “Let’s do it.”

I put my hand on Vince’s shoulder and said, “We’re going to stop and try TACBE.”

He nodded and said, “Yep, Okay, yep.”

I tried to open my pouch. It was easier said than done. My hands were frozen and so numb that I couldn’t get my fingers to work. Mark started fumbling with my belt kit as well, but he couldn’t unclench his fingers enough to undo the pouch. Finally, somehow, I had the TACBE in my hand. The last couple of jets were still going over.

“Hello any call sign, this is Bravo Two Zero, Bravo Two Zero. We are a ground call sign and we’re in the shit. Over.”

Nothing. I called again. And again.

“Hello any call sign, this is Bravo Two Zero, Bravo Two Zero. We are a ground call sign and we’re in the shit. We have a fix for you. Over.”

If they did nothing else other than inform somebody of our position, we’d be laughing. Mark got out Magellan and pressed the fix button to give us longitude and latitude.

It was then that I heard the wonderful sound of an American voice, and it suddenly registered with me that these would be jets coming from Turkey to do raids around Baghdad.

“Say again, Bravo Two Zero, Bravo Two Zero. You’re very weak. Try again.”

The signal was weak because he was screaming out of range.

“Turn back north,” I said. “Turn back north. Over.”

No reply.

“Hello any call sign, this is Bravo Two Zero. Over.”

Nothing.

They’d gone. They wouldn’t come back. Bastards!

Five minutes later, the horizon was lit by bright flashes and tracer. The jets were obviously hosing something down near Baghdad. Their run-ins are crucial, timed to the split second. They couldn’t have turned back for us even if they’d wanted to. At least he had repeated our call sign. Presumably this would get filtered through the system, and the FOB would know we were still on the ground, but in the shit-or at least, that one of us with a TACBE was.

It was all over within twenty or thirty seconds. I hunched with my back to the wind as I replaced the TACBE in my pouch. I looked at Legs and he shrugged. He was right-so what? We’d made the contact.

“Maybe they’ll fly back this way and things will be good,” I said to Bob.

“Let’s hope.”

I turned into the wind to tell Chris and the other two that we’d better press on.

“For fuck’s sake,” I whispered, “where’s everybody else gone?”

I had told Vince we were going to try TACBE. The correct response is for the message to get passed along the line, but it can’t have registered in his numbed brain. He must have just kept on walking without telling Chris and Stan.

It’s each man’s responsibility in the line to make sure that messages go up or down, and if you stop, you make sure that the bloke in front knows that you’ve stopped. You should know who’s in front of you and who’s behind you. It’s your responsibility to make sure they’re always there. So it was my fault and Vince’s that they didn’t stop. We both failed in our responsibilities-Vince in not passing it on, me in not making sure that he stopped.

We couldn’t do anything about it. We couldn’t do a visual search because Chris was the only person with a night-viewing aid. We couldn’t shout because we didn’t know what was ahead of us or to either side. And we couldn’t use white light-that’s a big no-no. So we’d just have to keep on the bearing and hope that they’d stop at some stage and wait for us. There was a good chance that we’d meet up.

I felt terrible. We had failed, more or less, in our contact with the aircraft. And now, even worse, we’d lost three members of the patrol-two of whom were injured. I was annoyed with myself, and annoyed with the situation. How the hell had I allowed it to happen?

Bob must have guessed what I was thinking because he said, “It’s done now: let’s just carry on. Hopefully we’ll RV.”

That helped me a lot. He was right. At the end of the day they were big boys: they could sort themselves out.

We headed north again on the bearing. The freezing wind pierced our flimsy desert camouflage. After two hours of hard tabbing we came to our MSR and crossed over. The next objective now was a meta led road further to the north.

We encountered a couple of inhabited areas, but boxed around without incident. Soon after midnight we heard noise in the distance. We started our routine to box around whatever it was and came across some armored vehicles, laagered up, then a forest of antennas. The face of a squaddy was briefly illuminated as he lit a cigarette. He probably should have been on stag, but he was dos sing in the cab of a truck. It was either a military installation or a temporary position. Whatever, we had to box around again.

Chris and the others can’t have gone into it, or we would have heard the contact.

We carried on for about twenty minutes. All of us were on our chin straps We’d had eight hours of head down and go for it. The stress on the legs had been immense. My feet hurt. I felt completely knackered. I had been thinking about the aircraft. It was hours ago that we’d heard them, so the pilots would be back in their hotels now enjoying their coffee and doughnuts while the engineers sorted their aircraft out. Such a lovely way to go to war. They climb into their nice, warm cockpits and ride over to their target. Down below, as far as they are concerned, is jet-black nothingness. Then what should they hear but the old Brit voice gob bing off, moaning about being in the shit. It must have been a bit of a surprise. I hoped so much that they were concerned for us and were doing something. I wondered if they would have reported the incident by radio as soon as it had happened, or if they’d wait until they returned to base. Probably the latter. Hours ago, and no other fast jets had come over. I didn’t know what the American system was for initiating a search and rescue package. I just hoped they knew that it was really important.