Soldier A: Behind Iraqi Lines by Shaun Clarke

Author:Shaun Clarke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1993-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

If the road-watch teams were relying on concealment as their best ally, the mobile fighting columns led by Major Hailsham, with the expert help of Sergeants Jock McGregor and Paddy Clarke, were anything but covert. Each column consisted of about a dozen four-wheel-drive vehicles – the Land Rovers dubbed Pink Panthers, and light-strike vehicles, or LSVs – plus motorcycle outriders such as the flamboyant young trooper ‘Johnny Boy’ Willoughby, who could fire his Browning 9mm high-power handgun with one hand while driving his Honda with the other. Though the bikers were notoriously flamboyant in word and deed, they merely summed up the general nature of Hailsham’s mobile fighting columns, which were not only overt, but extremely daring and, some would say, reckless.

The columns’ Pink Panthers had proven their worth in the first raids into the Scud box a few weeks before. The American LSVs, while they tended to break down too easily, were gradually becoming valued for their speed and ‘invisibility’ in hit-and-run raids, though certain SAS officers harboured reservations.

‘I felt like Buffalo Bill,’ was Jock’s assessment. ‘Just riding in there with all guns blazing. Fucking fantastic, boss!’

‘I know you found them exciting,’ Major Hailsham replied calmly. ‘You thought you were in a dodgem car in a funfair in Glasgow. Fast they may be, Sergeant, and wonderful to handle, but they do have a terribly small fuel tank and also tend to break down.’

‘Bullshit,’ said Marlon ‘Red’ Polanski, the US Army Master-Sergeant recently attached to the SAS from 1st Special Forces Group. ‘Those little babies are in a class of their own. We’ve only had complaints from the SAS. You guys are spoiled rotten.’

‘We’re British,’ Hailsham said, as if that explained everything.

‘What the hell does that mean?’ Red responded. ‘You need more than the rest of us?’

‘Certain standards, dear boy. High expectations. We’re not into mass-produced toys produced to warm a child’s heart.’

‘Beg your pardon, boss?’ Jock said.

‘No offence meant, Jock. I merely mean that the LSV, so beloved of the Delta Force, does not necessarily excite the SAS, nor even meet all of its requirements.’

They were drinking in a tent in Wadi Tubal. Not allowed alcohol in this Muslim country, they were making do with tonic water with ice and lemon. But as this tasted like an alcoholic drink, they were all feeling high.

‘Goddammit,’ Red said, ‘I just don’t believe this garbage. You go into the goddam desert, you raid Iraqi mobile units like Indians attacking a wagon train – in out and like whirling dervishes, always highly successful – and you do it in our LSVs and still complain they’re no good. You must be outa your mind!’

‘I didn’t say they were no good,’ Hailsham replied. ‘I merely said they had faults.’

‘Not as good as the old Pink Panther, right?’

‘Exactly, my dear Master-Sergeant.’

Polanski grinned at the grinning Jock, then looked back at Hailsham. ‘Does that mean you’re not using them again?’

‘No, Master-Sergeant. Surely that’s why you’re here. To bear witness to how we use your little toys and offer advice.

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