James Ashcroft - Making a Killing - The Explosive Story of a Hired Gun in Iraq

In the supermarket, even at the off-licence, we asked for a receipt and they’d scribble something in Arabic ( bollocks , probably). We accounted for every penny we spent. Personal integrity prevented us robbing Spartan blind but we made sure the company paid for every chicken breast and can of Stella, every spark plug, 9mm bullet and bribe, of which there were many. You couldn’t get receipts for the bribes, but they were logged and signed off by the accountant.

The problems with currency would continue. As we started to build the guard force, the guards were happy to be paid in dollars, but then found they had problems paying for the family groceries. If local people had too many dollars, the insurgents considered them collaborators and they’d catch a bullet in the back of the head.

We had that to look forward to but, before Christmas, we were able to go shopping and mingle with the locals. Sort of. I went out with Sammy to look at some Mesopotamian artefacts some crook was trying to sell, but I didn’t have the exorbitant price nor the desire to rob Iraq of what remained of its heritage. Many of the antiquities looted from the museum had already been smuggled across the border and sold to private collections.

That evening with Seamus and Les, I had the rare pleasure of being invited to Sammy’s home to dinner with his wife and two children, the first time I had been inside an Iraqi house, at least as a guest. His wife was slender, cultivated and spoke French, which Sammy did not. I told her in French that I considered her husband a hero. She replied that she did, too, but we must never let him know that because to be a good Muslim you must avoid the sin of pride.

Next day, I went with the South Africans to the famous leather street to order a jacket. I chose a stylish blazer in black glove leather and took the piss out of the Yaapies as they drew pictures of biker jackets and impractical long coats like costumes from The Matrix . Hendriks designed a jacket and waistcoat combination with a mass of inner holsters and straps for knives, magazines and grenades. I laughed myself silly, but the last laugh was on me when we returned to the shop for the finished items. Hendriks’s creation was the ultimate in cool. It fit to perfection and when he opened the jacket, there were all the secret slings and zips to carry his implements of death. It cost him $40.

That was our last shopping trip before the Christmas festivities broke out with a chain of IEDs, firefights and mortar attacks across the city. The streets became a no-go area for the white-eyes. I had promised Krista that I would leave if the violence became worse. I’d been back a week and I was already raising that bar in my mind. I thought about this alone at night while I stood on the roof watching streams of tracer cross the sky and couldn’t decide if I was only staying on for the money or if, like some of the old mercenaries I’d met at the CPA, I was getting too used to the danger.

The sky was alight for three consecutive nights while the US pounded the city from a Spectre AC-130. The Spectre is a modified Hercules that acts as an airborne artillery firebase and is quaintly known as ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’. The plane flies around in a huge circle with its 105mm and 40mm automatic cannons thumping away with horrifying accuracy at targets on the ground. It also has a couple of large Gatling guns that sound like the world unzipping. Every bout of firing is echoed even louder as the shells hit the ground and explode seconds later. Boom, boom, boom… BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. Brrrrrrt … BRRRRRT.

During the early hours of 23 December 2003 the battle came closer to home with the Spectre directing its fire just west of us, between Aradisa Idah and the Dora refinery. The Yaapies spent the evening on the roof watching the assault like it was a fireworks display, but I preferred to lie in bed blocking out the noise listening to Teach Yourself Arabic tapes on the headphones. The Americans malleted the insurgent bases by night and by day the insurgents brushed off the dust and set up their mortars. It was like ping pong.

I got up bleary-eyed and carried on my job as an infantryman building a four-sided range out on the farmland to the south. This was where our new recruits in the guard service would be training and for now I was supervising an Iraqi bulldozer, a ‘shovel’, the locals called it, into completing twenty-foot-high sand berms. Hendriks and Etienne were tasked with security, but seemed to have different ideas on strategy. Etienne was standing on top of the berm like a tourist.

‘Why are you fokken standing up there silhouetting yourself?’ demanded Hendriks.

‘I am trying to draw fire so I can shoot the bastards. Why are you hiding down there?’

‘Man, I’m waiting for you to draw fire so I can shoot someone.’

We got back at lunchtime to find the office block drilled with bullet holes. Ali, the new armourer, had accidentally discharged 50 rounds from a PKM belt-fed machine gun inside the office block as he tried to unload it. He was mortified when he told me what had happened.

It was Christmas Eve. We were bored being stuck out in the suburbs and in the afternoon decided to make a dash for the CPA and find a party. With this fresh wave of violence, there was less traffic on the road, which meant there were less cars to hide among but at least we could move faster.

We picked up Del Waghorn from HQ, an ex-marine commando who had been on the Circuit for years; the 24th was also his birthday and he was one guy who didn’t need an excuse to get out of it. We then went to Hind’s office to collect Mad Dog and Gareth, one of the sergeants. They appeared carrying a huge chest of booze which they slung into the back of the Nissan. Mad Dog McQueen liked to hang out with the Brits and was one of the few American officers with whom you could discuss the war without being accused of being a commie or a traitor or an ignorant son of a bitch incapable of grasping the intricacies of America’s obligations.

It was a warm afternoon, the sky was almost blue and we decided to go sightseeing. We popped into one of the palaces, bribed a guard and strolled along Saddam’s famous carpet of dollar bills. They looked real, but we discovered sadly they were fake. We shot some snaps, posed in front of the crossed swords on Victory Parade. The giant fists holding the swords were modelled from Saddam’s hands and suspended from them were nets containing hundreds of Iranian helmets. There were more helmets concreted into the ground so that the parading soldiers would be marching over what in Saddam’s mind was the defeated enemy. We had a suspicion that the original owners were still wearing those helmets and the guards had to stop the Yaapies from trying to dig one up to find out. Dai dropped some baksheesh on the same guards and they looked the other way while we climbed up inside one of the fists to get some photos of us hanging out of the top.

When it began to get dark, we decided to have a drink at the Al Rasheed Hotel. It was closed due to the elevated threat level and a group of weary Iraqi guards stood outside wondering if they’d find more job satisfaction in the insurgency. Money was pouring into Iraq from the US Treasury and more money was coming from fundamentalist groups all over the Arab world. Now that the insurgents were better organised, they had a pay structure slightly better than the wages for those joining the security forces. We had been told that the families of suicide bombers received $25,000 and there was even a suggestion of families receiving a pension. I could see the time coming when a broker would find a way to make money selling suicide bomber insurance.

We set off for the Sheraton, but the hotel was in the process of being mortared. We headed instead for the British compound back in the CPA where we had a decent sing-song and headed back to the villa at midnight with the Spectre AC-130 circling above with its automatic cannons picking out targets. Fortunately, we were not one of them.