Andy McNab - Bravo Two Zero

The stench of burning flesh made me gag. I howled like a dog.

Spoon. Scream. Spoon. Scream.

He rubbed it in small circles and little crisscross grids.

I jumped up, so violently that the blokes couldn’t hold me. I yelled and yelled in an effort to release the pain.

They got me back on to the chair.

“Do you see, Andy? It’s pointless. Just tell us what we want to know.”

Legs told them fuck all. They wouldn’t be doing all this just to get his information confirmed. And they hadn’t said what information Legs was supposed to have told them. It was a load of old bollocks. If he could hold out, so could I.

People came in and out of the cells all the time now. The sound track was just screaming and shouting and the horrific banging of the sheet metal doors.

The guards must have had a beasting roster. Teams came in every two hours or so, hollering and shouting and filling us in. We were still handcuffed and blindfolded.

“Stand up! Sit down!”

As you’re trying to do it, they’re punching and kicking. Sometimes I’d fall into a semiconscious state after just a few punches, sometimes I’d just be there, breathing heavily and taking it. Sometimes they’d come in with a length of hose, which hurt incredibly on my kidneys and back. My body was becoming even more of a mess, but the worst bit about it was hearing them in Stan’s or Dinger’s room. Not so much because I was concerned for them-there was nothing I could do to help, and they were big and ugly enough to take it-but because it meant that it was going to be my turn soon.

One time, by way of a change, the interrogation started off all rather pleasantly.

“You’re in a terrible condition, aren’t you, Andy?”

“Yeah, I’m in terrible condition.”

My mouth was so matted with scabs and swellings I could hardly get the words out.

“How are your teeth-they were giving you some problems before?”

“I’ve got some smashed in at the back. They hurt.” I continued to play the humble dickhead. And at this stage I was totally out of the game anyway. My teeth were agony-more painful than the worst toothache I’d ever had, and then some.

“I have arranged for somebody to come in and sort that out,” The Voice said soothingly. “We have a dentist here. In fact, he worked in Guy’s Hospital in London for nine years. He’s one of the best.”

My blindfold was removed. The dentist appeared and said, “Hello, Andy.” He got me to open wide, and gently and reassuringly he peered into my mouth. He sounded sympathetic as he took some instruments from a bag.

“Open wide again, Andy, please,” he said in perfect English. “Oh, dear, that is bad, but I’ll soon sort it out for you.”

I had my suspicions, but there was nothing I could do. I opened as wide as I could for him, and the cunt gripped the first stump of tooth with the pliers and twisted hard.

I screamed and blood gushed from my mouth.

“Do you really think we’re going to help you?” The Voice laughed. “Do you really think we’re going to help you, you despicable heap of shit? We could just leave you to die, you know-you’re so irrelevant to us. Who do you think is going to help you, Andy? Your government? You can’t believe that. John Major doesn’t care about lumps of excrement like you. No, Andy, the only one who can help you is yourself. Why are you doing this to yourself? You’re going through this for nothing. You’re stupid, a stupid, misguided fool, and your teeth are going to come out one by one.”

I couldn’t answer. I was screaming. I knew that I was going to die.

And I knew now that it wouldn’t be clean and quick.

We had been stripped of all clothing for several days now and left exposed to the damp and bitter cold. We were getting beaten regularly in the cells and tortured to the point of unconsciousness during the interrogations. We were put in stress positions in the cells, blindfolded and handcuffed, and we had to stay that way. They’d come in and beat us when we toppled over. The combined effects were taking more and more of a toll.

There was bombing every night, and sometimes it would be close. On one occasion the place was rattling on its foundations, and the guards were yelling and running around.

I was lying on the floor listening to the noise, and I heard myself screaming at the top of my voice: “Do it! Fucking bomb me! I’m down here!”

I really thought they were going to carry on with it until I was dead. I wanted it over with now. I wanted the pain to stop.

Heavy ordnance makes a buzzing sort of sound as it falls. I fixed my attention on each buzz and willed it to land in my cell. The building rocked and trembled. I felt the pressure waves of high explosive. It was the first time I had ever wanted to die, and I just wanted and wanted them to do it. I had reached the lowest point of my life.

For fifteen minutes one night I found God. The Supreme Being was in the top right-hand corner of the cell, and I had a little discussion with him.

“Come and help me now,” I pleaded. “If you help me now, I’ll be your best mate for ever. If you’re there, fucking do something about this. We need your help now-all of us. If you’re there, do it, and I’ll be putting pennies in your pot every day.”

I said as much of the Lord’s Prayer as I could remember from school, but nothing happened. God did not exist.

I was slowly dying. Your body tells you. The cell was awash with my shit and piss. I slept in it. It covered me.

Sometimes they’d bring me a drink.

One night a gang of guards came in.

“Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv,” one of them said.

“No, British,” I mumbled, “I’m British.”

“Foreskin,” he demanded. He’d obviously heard the story and wanted to see for himself.

I motioned that I couldn’t do anything because of the handcuffs, and they undid them.

Still blindfolded, I fumbled with my swollen, numb fingers to find my cock. I stretched out the foreskin, and they roared with laughter.

Two of them grabbed my arms from behind. One in front of me was slapping something in the palm of his hand. I heard a slight swishing sound, then all my world was pain. My knees buckled. The guard in front of me had raised something like a riding crop in the air and tonked it down hard on the end of my cock. They hooted as I screamed and writhed on the ground.

They bent over me and prodded and flicked at my bollocks. Again I wondered if I was going to get fucked, but the difference this time was that I was way past caring. But that wasn’t what they had in mind. With a final kick to my balls that left me retching with agony, they handcuffed me again and left, still chortling.

One day they came into my cell, screaming and shouting. One of them was carrying a newspaper. The frontpage story that he shoved under my nose was of the

Allied bombings the day before. The Iraqis had lined up all the bodies of the children that had been killed. There was a photograph of their distraught mothers weeping over their little forms. The guards slapped and punched me furiously, as if I was personally responsible for what had happened. It developed into the normal filling in, followed by a 10-minute recovery period, and another filling in. When I finally flaked out, they left me.

When I came to, I saw that they’d left the newspaper behind. I crawled over and checked the front page for something that I remembered from previous trips to the Middle East. I found what I was looking for. The only thing in English on the whole page was at the top, near the title: the figure 4.

It was the 4 thof February.

That meant they had been torturing us for five days.

I was dressed just in my socks and a big, baggy pair of army-issue skivies I’d been given when I arrived in Saudi. They were black now, smeared with shit and permanently wet with piss.