Two fighters screamed down to check us out, then flew back up.
“We’re 5Ks short of the border,” the pilot said. “Watch what happens now.”
As he spoke, and as if a single fuse controlling the Blackpool illuminations had blown, the sky was suddenly pitch-black. Every aircraft had dowsed its lights at once.
We landed in inky blackness for a hot refuel, which meant staying on board with the rotors moving. We were going to receive the final “go” or “no go” here regarding the vital deconfliction, and as the ground crew loomed out of the darkness, I watched anxiously for somebody to give an encouraging signal. One of them looked at the pilot and revolved his hand: Turnaround.
Bastard!
Another bloke ran up to the pilot with a bit of paper and pushed it through the window.
The pilot’s voice came over our headsets a moment later: “It’s a no go, no go; we’ve got to go back.”
Dinger was straight on the intercom. “Well, fuck it, let’s get over the border anyway, just to say we’ve been over there-come on, it’s just a couple of Ks away: it won’t take long to get there and back. We need to get over, just to stop the slagging when we return.”
But that wasn’t the way the pilot saw it. We stayed on the ground for another twenty minutes while he did his checks and the refueling was completed; then we lifted off and headed south. Wagons were waiting for us. We unloaded all the kit and were taken to the half-squadron location, which by this time had been moved to the other side of the airfield. People had dug shell scrapes and covered them with ponchos and bits of board and cardboard to keep out the wind. It looked like a dossers’ camp, bodies in little huddles everywhere, around hexy-block fires.
The patrol were in dark moods, not only because of the anticlimax of not getting across the border, but also because we weren’t sure what was going to happen next. I was doubly unimpressed because I had given my mattress away.
All during the day of the 20th we just hung loose, waiting for something to happen, waiting for a slot.
We checked the kit a couple more times and tried to make ourselves a bit of a home in case we had a long wait. We got some camouflage netting up-not from the tactical point of view, because the airfield was in a secure area-but just to keep the wind off and give us some shade during the day. It gives you an illusion of protection to be sheltered under something. Once we had made ourselves comfy, we screamed around the place in LSVs (light strike vehicles) and pinkies seeing what we would nick. The place was a kleptomaniac’s dream.
We did some good exchanges with the Yanks. Our rations are far superior to the American MREs (meals ready to eat), but theirs do contain some pleasant items-like bags of M amp;M’s and little bottles of Tabasco sauce to add a little je the sais quoi to the beef and dumplings. Another fine bit of Yank kit is the strong plastic spoon that comes with the MRE pack. You can burn a little hole through the back of it, put some string through, and keep it in your pocket: an excellent, almost perfect racing spoon.
Because our foam mattresses had been whisked away to a better world during the abortive flight, we tried to get hold of some comfy US issue cots. The Americans had kit coming out of their ears, and bless their cotton socks, they’d happily swap you a cot for a couple of boxes of rations.
Little America was on the other side of the airfield. They had everything from microwaves and doughnut machines to Bart Simpson videos screening twenty four hours a day. And why not-the Yanks sure know how to fight a stylish war. Schoolkids in the States were sending big boxes of goodies to the soldiers: pictures from 6-year-olds of a good guy with the US flag, and a bad guy with the Iraqi flag, and the world’s supply of soap, toothpaste, writing material, combs, and antiperspirant. They were just left open on tables in the canteen for people to pick what they wanted.
The Yanks could not have made us more welcome, and we were straight in there, drinking frothy cappuccino and having a quick root through. Needless to say, we had most of it away.
Some of the characters were outrageous and great fun to talk to, especially some of the American pilots who I took to be members of the National Guard. They were all lawyers and sawmill managers in real life, big old boys in their forties and fifties, covered in badges and smoking huge cigars, flying their Thunderbolts and whooping “Yeah boy!” all over the sky. For some of them, this was their third war. They were excellent people, and they had amazing stories to tell. Listening to them was an education.
During the next two days we went over the plan again. Now that we had a bit more time, was there anything we could improve on? We talked and talked, but we kept it the same.
It was frustration time, just waiting, as if we were in racing blocks and the starter had gone into a trance. I was looking forward to the relief of actually being on the ground.
We had a chat with a Jaguar pilot whose aircraft had been stranded at the airfield for several days. On his very first sortie he had had to abort because of problems with a generator.
“I want to spend the rest of the war here,” he said. “The slagging I’ll get when I fly back will be way out of control.”
We felt quite sorry for him. We knew how he felt.
Finally, on the 21st, we got the okay to go in the following night.
On the morning of the 22nd we woke at first light. Straightaway Dinger got a fag on.
Stan, Dinger, Mark, and I were all under one cam net, surrounded by rations and all sorts of boxes and plastic bags. In the middle was a little hexy-block fire for cooking.
Stan got a brew going from the comfort of his sleeping bag. Nobody wanted to rise and shine because it was so bloody cold. We lay there drinking tea, gob bing off, and eating chocolate from the rations. Our beauty sleep had been ruined by another two Scud alerts during the night. We were sleeping with most of our kit on anyway, but it was a major embuggerance to have to pull on your boots, flak jacket, and helmet and leg it down to the slit trenches. Both times We only had to wait ten minutes for the all clear.
Dinger opened foil sachets of bangers and beans and got them on the go. Three or four cups of tea and, in Dinger’s case, three cigarettes later, we tuned in to the World Service. Wherever you are in the world, you’ll learn what’s going on from them before any other bugger tells you. We take small shortwave radios with us on all operations and exercises anyway, because if you’re stuck in the middle of the jungle, the only link with the outside world you ever get is the World Service. Everywhere you go, people are always bent over their radios tuning in, because the frequencies change depending on the time of day. We were going to take them out on this job as well, because the chances were that it was the first we’d know that the war had ended. Nobody would be able to tell us until we made com ms and that could be the day after Saddam surrendered. We took the piss out of Dinger’s radio because it’s held together with bits of tape and string. Everybody else had a digital one, and Dinger still had his old steam-powered thing that took an age to tune in.
We had heard rumors that there was going to be some mail in that day, our first load since arriving in Saudi. It would be rather nice to hear from home before we went off. I was in the process of buying a house with Jilly, and I had to sign a form giving her power of attorney. I was hoping that was going to come through; otherwise, there would be major dramas for her to sort out if I got topped.
The pilot and copilot came over, and we had a final chat about stowing the equipment. I went through the lost com ms routine and actions on contact at the OOP again, to make doubly sure we were both clear in our minds.