I daren’t move my hands because that let the cold in. We had to move as fast as we could to generate body warmth. It was desolate, no ambient light, just the sound of the wind. It was as if we were on a different planet, and the only people on it.

We pressed northwards, heads down and faces blue with cold. Vehicle lights moved now and again in the distance, indicating the meta led road. The ground started to change again, from hard sand to bedrock with shale. All round the area there were tank berms where bulldozers had made trenches for tanks to get into the “hull down” position. They were filled with water and ice; they weren’t new.

We’d dropped about 200 feet in elevation. All of us were suffering badly. I looked out from behind my shamag and thought: If the weather doesn’t improve soon, we’re going to die.

We had marched about a mile and a half over the road when I decided we should turn back. Windchill was going to kill us. We were stumbling, shivering violently, starting to switch off, our minds wandering. If we didn’t act now, they were the last symptoms that we would recognize. The next stage was coma. We’d get back across the meta led road and retreat for another mile to a dried-up riverbed I remembered which ran more or less parallel with the road. It was the only place we had found that night that was out of the wind. If we didn’t get back there and sort ourselves out, there’d be no selves to sort out.

We turned back, tactics thrown literally to the wind. Stealth was irrelevant now. All we wanted to do now was save our lives. We stumbled into the ditch and huddled together. Mark was the worst affected, but we all needed help. Bob and I jumped on top of him and gave him body heat. Dinger and Legs did the same together and got a brew on. It’s an outrageous big no-no, making brews at night, but so what? If you’re dead, that’s it. Better to take the chance and live to fight another day. If we didn’t get compromised, we would hopefully start to recover. If we did, we would either get away with it or die. If we didn’t do it, we could die anyway.

They got two brews on, one after the other, and passed them around. We got some hot food down Mark. He was slurring his words good style, definitely on his way out. I seriously thought we were all going to die.

We were there a couple of hours, just trying to get warm in a big huddle. We got a slight improvement. I didn’t really want to make a move because we were still freezing and soaking. But we all knew we had to get going or we were never going to make any headway. After all, the aim was to evade capture.

We had three factors to worry about: the weather, our physical condition, and the enemy. Because of the terrain it was very unlikely that we would avoid the wind that was giving us so much trouble. No matter where we went or what we did it would be there. Our physical condition could have been worse, but not much. The ideal would have been to stay there out of the wind until it stopped or the weather improved. But how long would that be? Water would be of concern sooner or later as well. The longer we went without it, the greater the problem would become.

There were far more enemy in the area than we had been told. Something was wrong somewhere. If we were compromised, action could be taken quicker because the troops were there on the ground. Would they now know that we were in the area after moving onto our LUP?

We had to move, but in which direction? In favor of going north then west was the fact that we would keep off the snowline. Against, that we would be exposed to the wind for longer and closer to the river, closer to habitation, and concealment would be difficult. Heading northwest would take us back on to the snowline, but it would be quicker, and the chances of concealment would be better. The height was approximately 1,100-1,200 feet, but once we were over that we would be down to around 600 feet all the way to the border. We could also do it in one night as long as our physical condition didn’t get any worse.

Whatever direction we went, the wind was going to get us. So it was best not to waste time. If we couldn’t make it, we would just have to come down again and rethink. It got to the stage where, if we didn’t move now, there wouldn’t be enough time. The longer we left it, the less darkness we had to get over this high ground. We would have to cover a good 12-15 miles, so we needed to get our arses into gear and get away.

The riverbed ran northwest, and we decided to make use of it for two reasons. One, it gave us tactical cover; two, it gave us a certain amount of protection from the wind. The only disadvantage was if we were approaching any military installations. The ditch was a good approach route if anybody was going to attack, so the chances were that it would be covered by fire and observation. However, we would take the chance.

It was about midnight, and we’d been moving for about two hours, patrolling tactically because of the amount of vehicles we’d seen coming from this direction. Moving so slowly is bad because you can’t keep as warm as you’d like to; however, it prevents you stumbling into something you may not be able to get out of.

Legs was in front as scout. I was behind him, then Bob, Mark, and Dinger. As we moved along the riverbed, I checked our navigation with the compass to make sure the ditch was leading us in more or less the right direction. The rest of the lads were covering the arcs. It was still freezing, but because we were moving tactically, we had something else to think about.

The ground started to change back to bedrock with shale. That was an added pain in the arse because of the noise, but for once the howling wind worked in our favor. It was a clear sky, with a three-quarter moon set in the west, a plus for navigation but not for concealment. The clouds were now gone, but this only made it colder.

The landscape was starting to change. The area had been generally flat, but from time to time now the ground gently rolled up into a mound which lasted for 1,000-1,250 feet. Undulating ground is good for concealment, and we started to feel better about our predicament. At last this desolate flatness was changing in our favor as the high ground started.

The distance between patrol members was dictated by the light. Ideally you want as much distance as possible so that if you come under fire, not everybody is caught in the same area and hosed down all at once. But it’s a compromise between that and actually seeing what’s going on with the bloke in front. We were patrolling with about four meters between each man.

There was no talking. You communicate by hand signal or by duplicating the scout’s movements. If the scout stops, the bloke behind him does the same, and it reverberates all the way down. If the scout kneels down, you all kneel down. Everything’s done very slowly and very deliberately, or you create movement, you create noise.

Legs suddenly froze.

Everybody behind him froze too. We all covered our arcs, looked around, waiting to see what he had seen. There was a plantation to our right-we could just see the tips of the trees. There were no lights or movement. There was high ground forward to the left, less than 350 feet away. Slowly coming into view as they got to the top of the hill were the silhouettes of two men. Both had “longs”-long weapons.

Legs started to kneel down very slowly, to get into the lip of the riverbed itself. We had the cover of the wind and the cover of them making noise. But spotting two men didn’t mean there weren’t two hundred about. We just didn’t know. Slowly and deliberately we started to get into cover.

Could it be two of our missing patrol members? The wind carried brief bits of chat in our direction, and I tried hard to hear a voice or word I recognized. But surely Vince, Stan, or Chris would never let themselves be sky lined like that, let alone walk around chatting? It was very frustrating. I was hoping so much that it was them and we’d be able to grab hold of them in some way.