Chris Ryan Read Free Page B

aircraft they make you sit down and buckle up. But now, on operations, there were no seats or straps, so we pleased ourselves and sat on the metal deck for the short flight up to our Forward Mounting Base, known as Victor. The head loadie (loadmaster) said, 'Hold tight, because we're going to do an operational take-off.' 10The One That Got Away The pilot revved his engines until they were screaming and the whole aircraft began to judder; then he let go his brakes and we were hurled forward and heaved into the air. Fifteen minutes later he went diving in and landed with a couple of heavy thumps and violent deceleration. At Victor a hangar became our temporary home. A heap of bergens, weapons piled in big rolls, a stack of American cots, boxes of radios, medical kit, demolition equipment �everything looked as though it had arrived just that minute. We gathered round for a quick briefing from the SSM: 'No walking around in your shreddies when the RSM's about . . . There's a couple of you need haircuts . . . Don't go into the Int hangar unless you're invited . . . Let's have the hangar tidy, fellers . . . Keep your kit up together round your bed space . . . I want the place swept out periodically . . Then the SQMS talked about the stores. 'OK,' he said, `the stores are there. There's rations there, but I don't want you going into them. If you need any kit, come to me . . . the ammo bunker is next to the cookhouse . . . Cookhouse timings: six to seven breakfast, twelve to one lunch, six to seven dinner . . . Grab yourself a bed, get a space . . . We'll start training tomorrow morning.' The. OC also gave us a brief, which amounted to his personal perception of how the build-up to war was going. He said that plans for Special Forces were still fluid. 'A' and `ID' Squadrons were already well advanced with their build-up training for deployment far behind Iraqi lines, and were out in the desert doing a squadron range package �that is, putting in squadron attacks which use all weapons, including .50 Browning heavy machine-guns, mortars, LAW 90 rocket launchers, Milan anti-tank missile launchers, and � most effective of all � M19s, high-speed grenade launchers, in effect machine-guns firing bombs. As for `B' Squadron � the OC said he hoped to get us a few vehicles, which we would have to convert for desert operations. He promised to keep us updated on the way things were looking, then told us to get our heads down before we started training next day. We each found a cot and Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go!11 set it up against the wall of the hangar, with a six-foot table across the foot of the bed and mosquito nets rigged on poles above � and that was to be our home for the next ten days. Morning revealed that we were well out in the desert, at one of several different camps dotted about a vast training area. Most of the desert was a flat plain of hard, beige-coloured sand, but every now and then runs of low dunes broke the monotony; on these ridges, which were maybe thirty feet high, a few tufts of dry grass and the odd tree were growing, and the sand was very soft, so that vehicles often got stuck. The wind had sculpted the sand into waves, which gave the landscape an attractive appearance. Approaching Victor you came over a rise, and there was a high chain-link fence surrounding the large hangars and a runway, with sand-dunes lapping the perimeter wire. The base had been built as a parachute school; the hangars were for storage of chutes and other equipment and there were tall towers for hanging chutes to dry. At night the perimeter was brightly illuminated. We began build-up training, and there was plenty to organise: radios, satellite communications, TACBEs, NBC drills. As a trained medic, I set up some medical instruction, teaching guys how to put drips in, how to pack gunshot wounds to stop bleeding, how to treat heat exhaustion. To demonstrate intravenous techniques, I grabbed a 'volun�teer' from the front row,