“I’ve got to go to the toilet,” I called out.
Somebody grabbed my arm and propelled me away, but by the time we got there I’d sprayed myself with runny stuff. I was taken back and put in the queue.
They took us one by one into tiny cells. The handcuffs were removed, and I could touch either side with my hands. But there were three blankets, a real luxury, and a little window. I needed to bang on the door every five minutes during the night. A guard appeared each time and dragged me down to the toilet, then stood over me while I dropped my arse. We spent the whole night toing and froing.
At first light we were given a good breakfast of egg, jam and bread, and hot, black tea. It was rather encouraging. I looked out of my cell and saw piles of old uniforms arranged on the floor, and yellow prison POW pajamas with pumps. I thought, this is the ticket.
An hour after breakfast, my cell door was opened, and I was led along a corridor to a room where there was a chair, table, mirror, water, and a razor.
The “barber” started to shave me, so clumsily that he ripped small chunks out of my face. Blood trickled down my chin.
“Can I do it myself?” I asked.
“No, you are a dangerous man.” They wouldn’t let me rinse my face afterwards, either. I just had to wipe the soap and blood off with my shirt.
I was taken back to the cell by two soldiers who told me to strip. They presented me with one of the yellow uniforms and took my clothes away. I said a sad, silent farewell to my escape map and compass.
“Name?”
“McNab.”
“You’ll be going home today. Very soon.” The blindfold was put back on.
The cells were opened one at a time. A soldier checked our names, removed the blindfolds, and we came out and got in line. Somebody came up to the left of me and grabbed my hand enthusiastically. “My name’s John Nichol,” he beamed.
I shook his hand. He noticed me looking at the green R.A.F polo neck under his yellow top.
“Fifteen Squadron,” he said. “Tornadoes.”
He was a really happy bloke, but not as delirious as the Americans. They were behaving as if they were already back in the States, and a few of the guards were getting twitchy about it. I was still keeping myself in check. The light was at the end of the tunnel, but who was to say it wasn’t just another guard with a Tiny lamp coming towards us?
We were blindfolded yet again and marched off in a big crocodile. After a few meters they stopped us again, and a soldier walked up and down the line spraying us with women’s perfume. I gritted my teeth. I could live with the smell, but the alcohol stung my badly shaved face.
We boarded a bus and after half an hour or so were told that we could take our blindfolds off. The bus had curtains, but I managed to look out through a gap and saw bombed bridges and buildings. Daily life was still very much going on, however. It was quite a happy time on the coach. The pilots were saying “Hi” to each other, and the guard at the front just sat there and let them get on with it.
It could be the world’s biggest bluff, however, and I decided to keep myself to myself.
We pulled up at the door of the Nova Hotel. The place was teeming with soldiers and camera crews, and there was a fleet of Red Cross vehicles. I began to feel slightly more at ease.
The main foyer was crowded with what I at first thought were Iraqis, but who turned out to be Algerian medical staff. Part of the trade-off between Saddam and the Red Cross had been that they provide medical staff for Baghdad. The Algerians lived in the hotel and helped in the local hospitals.
We were taken into one of the reception rooms and segregated by nationality for documentation. The hotel had no heating, no hot water, no lifts. There was lighting, but the Red Cross had brought everything else with them, including their own food.
This was the first time that the Red Cross had had any news about any of us from the Iraqis. Even then, the lists being handed over were corrupt. It was a breach of the Geneva Convention, but a rather minor one compared with the rest of our experiences as POWs.
I was keen to find out about Dinger and Stan.
“Have there been prisoners released before us?” I asked one of the women.
The Red Cross personnel appeared to range from women in their mid-twenties to men in their late fifties. They were incredibly brave and professional people. I wouldn’t have done their job.
“Yes. They got out via Jordan.”
“Is there any chance you can give me the names of the Brits?”
She checked a list for me and found the surnames of Dinger and Stan.
There were no other names that I recognized.
The girl confirmed that we were the last batch. So we had been the only three all along, I thought. All the stuff about wounded signals operators was a load of bollocks-a good bluff that had got me to gob off. Legs had probably been dead from the time Dinger left him.
Once the administration was done, we were given a little Red Cross ticket and a number, and the Europeans were taken upstairs to the third floor. I noticed that the fire escapes were boarded up, leaving only one way in and out through the central staircase.
Everything we needed was on the third floor. A Red Cross waiter brought us anything we asked for-if he had it. We got boiled eggs that weren’t boiled properly. When we opened them they ran, but they were the best eggs I’d had in my life. The others followed theirs with croissants and chocolate, but by that time I was in the toilet, bulking up. I started again with an empty stomach and settled for a bottle of beer and some bread. We sat around talking, and I listened to everybody saying, “Well, that’s it, we’re away.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After all that we’d been through, people were taking the Iraqis at their word.
It seemed the intention that we were going to be held in the hotel for a couple of hours and then taken away to an airfield. One of the Red Cross blokes asked if anybody was cold.
“Fucking right,” came the reply.
Two hours later he came back with a jumper for each of us that somebody had gone and bought downtown. The patterns were weird and wonderful, but they were warm.
The main man of the Red Cross appeared and said, “Is there an Andy McNab here?”
“Yes.”
“Somebody downstairs wants to see you.”
As he led me down the staircase I said, “We fly out this afternoon?”
“We don’t know yet because of the weather. We could also be delayed because we can’t get the aircraft back from Saudi. It’s very difficult to get communications-the Iraqis won’t let me set up my own satellite com ms It’s all third-hand information, so I’m just sitting here and waiting. It’s a terrible setup: they won’t give me any help at all. We brought all these Algerian medical teams to help them with the civilian victims of the bombing, but they’ve moved the civvies out of the hospitals in Baghdad and told them to go home, to leave hospital beds for soldiers who are coming home from the front. There’s so much unrest they have to give priority to the soldiers.
“That’s why you are on the third floor. We put the Algerians at the bottom because they are in no danger.
We have the Red Cross personnel next, and then you right at the top, because they are after you. They want some of you for hostages and bargaining power. If you come down these stairs, you must only come down with me or another Red Cross member.
“We can’t get the badly wounded up to the third floor because the lifts do not work and we can’t maneuver them around the staircases. Unfortunately they’ve got to stay downstairs. It’s quite possible that they’ll raid the place and take people. The only defense we have is our Red Cross status.”
We went into the main foyer, and I spotted two sinister-looking Arabs sitting by the reception desk.
“Secret police,” he warned.