Andy McNab: Bravo Two Zero

Chris was blindfolded and made to kneel on the tarmac. His head was pushed forward and he thought: Here we go, it’s topping time. He was severely pissed off with himself for falling into the trap.

For several seconds, nothing happened. Then they hauled him to his feet and pushed him into the back of one of the cars. They must just have been having a bit of fun. They ‘ drove for another two hours, and Chris saw a big sign with an arrow and the word Baghdad.

One of the men in sunglasses said, ‘”Yes, we are going to Baghdad. You are prisoner of war. We are Iraqi.”

It was coming to last light, and the sun was setting in front of them. Chris was so confused by this stage that he couldn’t remember whether the sun set in the west or the east. He thought back to his childhood in Tyneside and the times he’d watched the sun coming up over the coast in the morning. If it came up in the east, he reasoned, then they must be heading west.

He knew he was right when he started to see signs saying Damascus. It was dark when they hit the outskirts of the city. The heavies put out their cigarettes and started straightening their ties. They pulled up behind another car. A man got out and came and sat in the passenger seat of Chris’s vehicle. Middle-aged and smartly dressed, he spoke excellent English.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes thanks, I’m fine.”

“Good. Don’t worry, it won’t be long now.”

It was clear to Chris that the other two blokes in the car were practically shitting themselves with fear of this fellow. When they reached a compound and stopped, both men jumped out and opened the man’s door for him. Chris tried to get out and fell onto his knees. His feet had given up the struggle. The man snapped his fingers, and Chris was carried into the building.

He was shown into a large office and greeted by a man in a navy blazer, striped shirt, and tie. The man shook his hand and said something.

“Welcome,” an interpreter translated.

The office had all the mod cons: teak furniture from Har rods, gold-plated AK47 on the wall, the lot. He worked out that they were in the headquarters of the secret police.

Through the interpreter, the top man asked if Chris would like a bath. Chris nodded and was ushered through a door into a bedroom, with bathroom and gym en suite. The man put a new blade in his razor and unwrapped soap and shampoo and put them on the bath as he left.

Chris was just starting to strip off when a young lad came in with a tape measure. He put it around Chris’s chest, then took his other measurements. Chris hoped it was a suit he was being measured for, and not a coffin.

The bath water was black almost as soon as he got into it, so he ran another one. Yet another boy appeared. He presented Chris with a cup of coffee. It was good stuff. He started to feel more secure. If they were going to top him, they wouldn’t waste good coffee on him.

The interpreter came back and asked him questions. Chris responded with the cover story. The Arab looked dubious, but made no comment. Chris got out of the bath and looked at himself in the mirror. He couldn’t believe how much weight he’d lost. His biceps were the size of his wrists. Somebody else came in with clean clothes for him. It felt fantastic putting on fresh skivies then a white shirt and tie, socks, shoes, and-the piece de resistance-a brand new pin-stripe suit that must have been run up in the last half hour, when he was in the bath-in the middle of the night. The trousers were a little too big around the waist, and the chief gave the lad with the tape measure a fearsome bollocking. The boy gestured for Chris to take them off again and disappeared with them over his arm.

A doctor was brought in. He dressed Chris’s feet and bandaged them up. As he was finishing, the boy came back with the trousers. This time they were a perfect fit.

The chief asked Chris if he’d care for a little food and led him to his dining room. The table was groaning under the weight of steaks, kebabs, vegetables, fruit, freshly baked bread. Chris knocked back a liter of water and then got stuck into a steak. He could manage only a few mouthfuls.

The chief was really getting into it now and offered him a night on the town.

“I’m sorry,” Chris said, “but I think I should go to the British Embassy as soon as possible.”

The chief looked really disappointed as he telephoned the embassy and arranged for somebody to come and collect Chris. He’d probably been looking forward to a night out on expenses.

When the driver from the British Embassy arrived, he, too, bowed to the chief. Then he picked up Chris’s dirty kit and carried it to the car while Chris shook hands with his new bosom buddy.

The embassy sent messages at once to Joint Headquarters at High Wycombe and to Riyadh, and made arrangements for Chris to fly out the next evening. It was the first news anybody had had of Bravo Two Zero since the night of the infil.

Chris had walked more than 180 miles in the eight nights of his E amp;E. In all that time he’d had nothing to eat except the two small packets of biscuits that he had shared with Vince and Stan, and he’d had virtually nothing to drink. He had lost an enormous amount of body weight, and his survival was attributed to his system feeding on its own meat.

It was two weeks before Chris could walk again properly, and six weeks before he got any sensation back in his toes and fingers. The location where he reported finding the water that burnt his mouth turned out to be a uranium-processing plant. He had a severe blood disorder and problems with his liver from drinking dirty river water, but he was back on operations very soon afterwards. It was one of the most remarkable E amp;Es ever recorded by the Regiment, as far as I am concerned, ranking above even the legendary trek through the desert of North Africa by Jack Sillitoe, one of David Stirling’s originals, in 1942.

There had been many more troops than we’d expected in the area. In fact, we now learnt that what we had gone into was one large military holding area: two Iraqi armored divisions were positioned between the border and our first LUP. As if that wasn’t bad enough, every man, woman, and child in the area had been told to be on the lookout for us. Children were given the day off school to join in the hunt. All the same, we gave a good account of ourselves: it was established by intelligence sources that we had left 250 Iraqi dead and wounded in our wake.

The FOB received our Sit Rep of January 23, but in a very corrupt mode, which must have confused the hell out of them. On the 24 th, at 1600 local time-the time of the compromise-another unintelligible signal was received. Later they picked up a faint TACBE signal and realized then that we were in trouble. And that was all they heard until Chris turned up in Syria on January 31.

Two rescue missions were mounted as a result of our lost com ms procedure and the corrupt signals. The first, on January 26, had to turn back soon after crossing the border as the Chinook pilot was violently ill. It was just as well after all that we hadn’t hung around for it. A second attempt was made on the 27 th, and this time it was a joint US and British effort. Misled by the location of the weak TACBE signal, they flew up the southern corridor, but of course with no result. American intelligence reports were also coming in of an Israeli attack on the Syrian border, but because it was assumed that we were heading south a connection with Bravo Two Zero was not made.

What had gone wrong with the patrol radio? Nothing. In any area of the world only certain frequencies will work, and even then they have to be changed during the day to take account of changes in the ionosphere. The frequencies we were given were wrong, which was most unfortunate. It was a human error that you have to hope will never happen again.