Andy McNab - Bravo Two Zero

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.

We spoke to the two loadies, lads in their twenties who were obviously great fans of Apocalypse Now, because the Chinook had guns hanging off it all over the place. The only things missing were the tiger-head emblems on their helmets and Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” coming out of their intercom speakers. For them, getting across the border was a once in-a-lifetime opportunity. They were loving it.

The pilots knew of some more Roland positions and had worked out a route around them, but from the way the loadies were talking you’d have thought they actually wanted to be attacked. They were gagging to get in amongst it. I imagined it would be a huge anticlimax for them if they dropped us off and came back in one piece.

I checked my orders at a table on the other side of the airfield, undistracted. Because the first infil had been aborted, I would have to deliver an orders group all over again that afternoon-not in as much detail, but going over the main points.

We waited for the elusive mail. The buzz finally went round that it had arrived and was on the other side of the airfield about half a mile away. It was 1730, just half an hour to go before moving off to the aircraft. Vince and I got into one of the LSVs and screamed round and grabbed hold of the B Squadron bag.

One of the blokes received his poll tax demand. Another was the lucky recipient of an invitation to enter a Reader’s Digest draw. I was luckier. I got two letters. One was from my mother, the first letter from either of my parents since I was maybe 17. They didn’t know I was in the Gulf, but it must have been obvious. I didn’t have time to read it. If you’re in a rush, what you can do is slit the letters open so that they appear to have been read, so as not to hurt anybody’s feelings if you don’t return. I recognized an A4 envelope from Jilly. Inside were some toffees, my favorite Pie ‘n Mix from Woolies. Oddly enough there were eight of them, one for each of us in the patrol. There was also the power of attorney letter.

The Last Supper is quite a big thing before you go out on a job.

Everybody turns up and takes the piss.

“Next time I see you I’ll be looking down as I’m filling you in,” somebody said, going through the motion of shoveling earth onto your grave.

“Nice knowing you, wanker,” somebody else said. “What sort of bike you got at home then? Anyone here to witness he’s going to give me his bike if he gets topped?”

It was a very lighthearted atmosphere, and people were willing to help out if they could in any preparation. At the same time, another lot of “fresh” turned up. The regimental quartermaster sergeant had got his hands on a consignment of chops, sausages, mushrooms, and all the other ingredients of a good fry-up. It was fantastic scoff, but one unfortunate outcome was that after being on rations for so long, it put us all in need of an urgent shit.

The ground crew had been up all night re camouflaging the Chinook a splashy desert pattern that drew wolf whistles and applause from the blokes who’d come to see us off.

It was time for passing on last minute messages again. I saw my mate Mick and said: “Any dramas, Eno has got the letters. Make sure you look after the escape map because it’s signed by the squadron. I don’t want that to go missing: it would be nice for Jilly.”

I overheard Vince saying: “Any drama, it’s down to you to make sure Dee’s sorted out.”

Mick had a camera round his neck. “Do you want a picture?”

“Madness not to,” I said.

We posed on the tailgate of the Chinook for the Bravo Two Zero team photo.

The blokes were busy taking the piss out of the aircrew, especially the loadies. One of them was a dead ringer for Gary Kemp from Spandau Ballet, even down to the 1980s sideboards. Two or three blokes from the squadron were standing by a wagon doing the old shu-wap, shu-wap routine, singing “You are gold……” The poor lad was getting well embarrassed.

Some blokes got together and-practiced doing the pallbearer bit, humming the death march. Others did a takeoff of the Madness video “It must be love,” where the singer is standing over a grave and the undertaker’s jumping up and down and across measuring him.

Interspersed with the banter was the odd muttering of “See you soon” and “Hope it all goes well.”

The aircrew came round for a final quick chat in their body armor, and we climbed aboard.

Nobody flies Club Class in a Chinook. The interior was spartan, a bare hull with plastic coating over the frame. There were no seats, just nonslip flooring to sit on. The deck was littered with sand and grease. A large inboard tank had been fitted to allow us to carry extra fuel. The stink of aviation fuel and engines was overpowering, even at the back near the ramp. It was like sitting in an oven. The loadies kept the top half of the tailgate down to circulate air.

The engines sparked up, coughing fearsome clouds of fumes to the rear. From our position on the ramp we saw blokes dropping their kecks and mooning in the heat haze, and the Spandau Ballet gang were giving it some again. As the Chinook lifted, its downwash created a major sandstorm. By the time the dust had settled we had reached a hundred feet, and soon all we could see were the flashing headlights of the pinkies.

It was hot and I started to sweat and stink. I felt tired, mentally as well as physically. So many things were running through my mind. The infiltration worried me because we had no control over it: we’d just have to sit there and hope for the best. I’ve never liked it when my life was in somebody else’s hands. There were Roland antiaircraft missiles along our route, and the bigger the machine, the bigger the chance of getting shot down. Chinooks are massive. There was also the added risk of getting hosed down by our own aircraft, since we were going in with the cover of three air raids.

I looked forward to getting on the ground, however. It felt good to be in command of such a classic SAS task. Everybody hopes for a major war once in his life, and this was mine, accompanied by a gang that the rest of the squadron was already calling the Foreign Legion.

The berg ens were strapped down to stop them flying through the air and landing on top of us if the pilot had to take evasive action or crashed. Just before last light, the loadies cracked cyalume sticks and put them around the kit so we could see where it was, mainly to prevent injury. The sticks are like the ones kids buy at fun fairs-a plastic tube that you bend to crack the glass phials inside and bring two chemicals together to make a luminous mixture.

I put on a pair of headsets and talked to the pilot while the rest of the blokes rooted through all the R.A.F kit, sorting out the crew’s sandwiches, chocolate, and bottles of mineral water.

We had a brief recap on the landing scenarios. If we came into a contact as we landed, we should stay on the aircraft. If we were getting off the aircraft, we should jump back on. But if the heli had already taken off and we had a contact, the Simplex radio gave us about a range of a mile to talk to him and summon him back.