By the end of the ten kilometres westwards, the strain was starting to tell. We’d been moving at high speed, with 20 kg belt-kits and our weapons, and we were sweating quite a bit in spite of the cold. That meant we were all thirsty, and soon we’d drunk nearly all our water. Whenever we stopped, we made sure to get more liquid down Stan’s neck. He had kept going by sheer willpower. After such a collapse it was a major feat to maintain the pace we were setting.
As soon as we’d fully lost sight of the vehicle behind us, we made our second right turn and headed north, stopping frequently to check our position with the GPS. This went on until we thought we were back within about seven kilometres of the main supply route. We were coming to the most dangerous bit. If we got caught on those tracks, out in the open, it would all be over. We needed to move even more quickly.
By then I was using the night-sight most of the time, with my weapon tucked under my left arm. It was awkward and tiring to walk like that. After a while my eyes started to hurt as well, because looking through the sight was like staring at a light. But there was no alternative. Soon I could make out the ridge on which the anti-aircraft guns were mounted, and I kept scanning for lights or artificial shapes, focusing my attention on what lay ahead.
Disaster hit us without warning.
We arrived at the main supply route and started to cross the tracks. There were about a dozen of them, running side by side, marked in hard mud, and they seemed to be spread over 200 or 300 metres. Out on that open expanse I felt very exposed, so I turned up the pace even faster. Then, just short of the high ground, I looked through the night-sight yet again and saw a black object that I thought might be a building or vehicle. At the foot of the slope I stopped to confer with Andy.
But Andy wasn’t there.
I saw Stan behind me, with his head hanging down, then Vince… but no one else.
‘Where’s the rest of the patrol?’ I demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ said Vince. ‘We’ve lost them.’
‘What d’you mean, lost them?’
‘They split off somewhere.’
Vince didn’t seem too concerned, but I was on the verge of panic. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s get up on the high ground, fast.’ I took one more look at the black object, decided it was a rock, and hustled forward as fast as I could. Just short of the top of the ridge I stopped again. Stan lay down like he was dead. Vince was completely zonked as well — he just sat there and couldn’t speak.
It had been at least an hour since I’d last spoken to Andy — so it could have been that long since the patrol had split. Looking back across the open gravel plains with the night-sight, I had a clear view for miles. It seemed impossible that the others could have gone far enough to vanish. I kept scanning and thinking that at any second I would see five black figures trudging in single file. I saw nothing.
For a few moments I was dumbfounded. Then I thought, My TACBE and Andy’s are compatible; if both are switched on at the same time, we should be able to talk to each other. The SOP for this situation was that anyone in difficulties would listen out on every hour and half-hour; so I waited five minutes till midnight, pressed the button and called: ‘Andy! Andy!’ No answer. I kept on for five minutes, fully expecting him to shout back, but no call came.
Things were going from bad to worse.
We were down to three men; one of them was out of the game, and the other didn’t want to be in it.
I had my 66 and a few grenades in my belt-kit, but otherwise we had only two main weapons: I had my 203, and Vince a 203 and a pistol. Stan had nothing but a bayonet.
Stan had drunk all my water and we also no longer had the GPS, which was with Mark. From now on we’d have to navigate by map, compass and dead reckoning — and this depended on knowing how fast we were covering the ground. The more tired we became, the less accurate we’d be. I regretted never having done a course in astral navigation: I could recognize the Plough, Orion’s Belt and a few other constellations, but that was all.
I looked around. Stan was asleep on the ground beside me, but Vince had moved off about fifteen metres and was burying his ammunition — a box of 200 rounds and a sleeve of 203 grenades.
‘What are you doing?’ I hissed.
‘I’m not carrying that stuff,’ he said. ‘It’s too heavy. If we get into a big contact, we’ll all be wasted anyway.’
‘You’ve got to carry it,’ I told him.
‘I can’t.’
‘Give us those rounds here, then.’
I was fuming. We only had the two weapons, and might really need the ammunition. But I couldn’t order Vince to carry it. So I slung the 203 bandolier over my shoulder and let him bury the box.
I went back, sat down, and waited until 0030. Then on the half-hour I tried the TACBE again. Still no reply.
We couldn’t just sit where we were, so we cracked on again, with Stan just behind me and Vince at the back. We kept going until 0500, by which time I could feel blisters starting on my feet and we were all at the end of our tether. That was hardly surprising, as we’d covered the best part of seventy kilometres during the night.
Dawn wasn’t far off. We needed somewhere to hole up for the day and we came across an old tank berm. This was a bank of soil about two metres high, built in the shape of a big U with one end open. A tank could drive into it and be hidden from the other three sides. Just short of it, and leading into it, were two tracks about twenty centimetres wide and ten deep, where a tank had sunk into the ground on its way in or out.
There was no point lying up inside the berm itself. The wind was blowing straight into its wide, open end so that its walls gave no shelter and anyone passing could look in. Equally, we couldn’t lie outside the walls in the lee of the wind, because we’d have been in full view from the other direction. The only shelter from the wind, and at the same time cover from view, was in the tank-ruts outside.
‘We’re going to have to stay here,’ I said, and we lay down in the deepest part of one of the tracks, head to toe. Vince was at one end, I was in the middle and Stan was beyond me. Down flat, we were more or less hidden, but I only had to raise my head a few centimetres to see out. It wasn’t a great place to hide, because if anyone came to visit the berm for any reason, we would be compromised.
While we’d been on the move, the wind hadn’t seemed too cold; but now that we’d stopped, it cut through our thin clothes. That was bad enough, but when daybreak came, the first thing I saw was heavy clouds piling in from the west.
Then I looked in the other direction and saw something square, about 600 metres off. It was either a little building or a vehicle, with antennae poking up out of it, and at least two men around it. This showed how right we’d been to remain alert during the night: here was some small military outpost, miles from anywhere — exactly the sort of place we might have walked onto.
We were separated from the rest of the unit.
We had barely any cover.
We could be discovered at any time.
The elements were against us.
But we had to spend the hours of daylight in this shallow ditch if we wanted any chance of escaping.
CHAPTER 6
Down to Two
It was so cold. The wind came knifing through my DPMs and smock, so I opened my canvas map case and laid it over my legs. I wrapped one shamag round my head, and pulled the other round my shoulders. Even then I was still freezing. But somehow I must have dozed off, because I woke up shaking violently, with what felt like pins and needles in my face. When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t believe it: it was snowing, and we were covered in white.