Chris Ryan - The One That Got Away - Junior edition

I knew from the map that the Iraqi town of Krabilah should be coming up on my right. Krabilah lay on the border, and there was a Syrian town beyond the frontier. The thought of it kept me going, but only just. By now my feet were so bad that whenever I sat down for a rest they went from numb to excruciating. Upright, I couldn’t feel them much; sitting, I thought they were going to burst. Several times I sat there thinking, I can’t take much more of this . Then the pain would ease off, and I had a few minutes of bliss, with nothing hurting.

The worst bit came whenever I stood up again, and the pain just exploded. Starting off, I couldn’t help gasping with the sheer agony. I had to shuffle my boots along the ground, and I kept thinking, If anyone sees me doddering along like this, I’ll look a right idiot . It wasn’t till I’d taken about ten paces that my feet seemed to go numb again, and I could walk out. Occasionally I’d hit a sharp stone or rock — and boy, was that sore.

Never in my life had I been so exhausted. Often on selection and afterwards, I thought I had pushed myself to my limit — but this was something else. All I wanted to do was stop and rest, but I knew that if I did I would never reach the border before my body gave out.

Towards the end I was stopping and resting on my feet. Because they were so agonizing if I sat down, I took to reading my map standing up — which was not a good idea, as my torch was up in the air instead of close to the ground. I’d walk until I was really knackered, then prop myself against something so that I kept the pressure on my feet.

I was so far gone that when I reached some houses I was on the point of giving in. If only I were in England! I thought. There’d be milk bottles standing on the doorstep, and a milk-float coming past in the morning . How many bottles of milk could I have drunk straight down?

I watched the houses for a while. They were only small places, but I’d find water in them, for sure, and food. Suddenly I decided I’d had enough. I’ll go in , I thought, and if I have to, I’ll do the people in there. I’ll get something to drink and take their vehicle .

I slid along one side of the nearest house, and found a window in the wall. It had iron bars down it, with a hessian curtain inside. Music was being played inside the room, and a candle or oil-lamp was flickering. I went past the window and reached the front of the building. Outside the door stood a car. Now! I thought. Just let the keys be in it!

As I came round the corner I looked down, and there was a dog, lying outside the door. The moment I saw it, it saw me and went berserk, barking frantically. Back I scuttled, along the side of the house, and away off into the wadis. The dog came out, and more dogs from the other buildings joined it. They followed me for about a hundred metres, barking like lunatics, then stopped.

Up in the wadis, I came to a railway line, scrabbled through a culvert under it, and was back in the desert. With a jolt I realized that this must be the same railway that Stan and I had crossed all those nights earlier. If only we’d tabbed straight along it, we’d have been out of Iraq days ago.

Spurred on by my latest fright, I kept walking, walking, walking. According to my calculations, I should have been passing Krabilah on my right, but there was no sign of the town. What I didn’t realize was that every house had been blacked out because of the war, and that I had already gone clean by the place in the dark.

I reached a refuse heap, where loads of burned-out old cans had been dumped in the desert, and sat down among them to do yet another map study. I couldn’t work things out. Where was the town? Above all, where was the Syrian border?

I started walking again, and as I came over a rise I saw three small buildings to my front. With the naked eye I could just make them out: three square bulks, blacked out. But when I looked through the night-sight, I saw chinks of light escaping between the tops of the walls and the roofs. As I sat watching, one person came out, walked round behind, reappeared and went back indoors. I was so desperate for water that I went straight towards the houses. Again I was prepared to take out one of the inhabitants if need be. I was only fifty metres away when I checked through the night-sight again and realized that the buildings were not houses at all, but sandbagged sangars with wriggly tin roofs. They formed some sort of command post, and were undoubtedly full of soldiers. Pulling slowly back, I went round the side and, sure enough, came on a battery of four anti-aircraft positions.

If I’d walked up and opened one of the doors, I’d almost certainly have been captured. Once more the fright got my adrenalin going and revived me.

On I stumbled for another hour. My dehydration was making me choke and gag. My throat seemed to have gone solid, and when I scraped my tongue, white fur came off it. I felt myself growing weaker by the minute. My 203 was so heavy it felt like it was made of lead. My legs had lost their spring and grown stiff and clumsy. My ability to think clearly had dwindled away.

At last I came to a point from which I could see the lights of a town, far out on the horizon. Something seemed to be wrong. Surely that couldn’t be Krabilah, such a long distance off? My heart sank: was the border still so far away? Or was the glow I could see that of Abu Kamal, the first town inside Syria? If so, where was Krabilah? According to the map, Krabilah had a communications tower, but Abu Kamal didn’t. The far-off town did have a bright red light flashing, as if from a tower — and that made me all the more certain that the place in the distance was Krabilah.

My morale plummeted once more. Like my body, my mind was losing its grip. What I could make out was some kind of straight black line, running all the way across my front. Off to my left I could see a mound with a big command post on it, sprouting masts. Closer to me were a few buildings, blacked out, but not looking like a town.

I sat down some 500 metres short of the black line and studied the set-up through the night-sight. Things didn’t add up. With Krabilah so far ahead, this could hardly be the border. Yet it looked like one. I wondered whether it was some barrier which the Iraqis had built because of the war, to keep people back from the border itself.

Whatever this line ahead of me might be, all I wanted to do was get across it. I forced myself to hold back, though, to sit down and observe it. This is where you’re going to stumble if you don’t watch out , I told myself. This is where you’ll fall down. Take your time .

There I sat, shivering, watching, waiting. A vehicle came out of the command post and drove down along the line. Directly opposite my vantage-point two men emerged from an observation post, walked up to the car, spoke to the driver, jumped in, and drove off to the right. It looked as if the Iraqis were putting out roving observers to keep an eye on the border. I couldn’t tell whether this was routine, or whether they suspected that enemy soldiers were in the area. After a few minutes I decided that the coast was clear, and I had to move.

At long last I came down to the black line. Creeping cautiously towards it, I found it was a barrier of barbed wire: three coils in the bottom row, two on top of them, and one on top of that. I had no pliers to cut with, so I tried to squeeze my way through the coils. It was impossible. Barbs hooked into my clothes and skin and held me fast. I unhooked myself with difficulty, and decided that the only way to go was over the top.

Luckily the builders had made the mistake, every twenty-five metres, of putting in three posts close to each other and linking them together with barbed wire. Obviously the idea was to brace the barrier, but the posts created a kind of bridge across the middle of the coils. I took off my webbing and threw it over, then went up and over myself. I cut myself in a few places, but it was nothing serious.