I had a pair of small binoculars, an excellent bit of kit that I’d bought at a jeweler’s in Hereford. I looked north at the road that went up to a pumping station. There was a steady stream of vehicles, one every few minutes: oil convoys, water bowsers, civilian Land Cruisers with the husband driving and the wife all in her black kit sitting in the back. The vehicles normally came in groups of three or four. There were also lots of military convoys, consisting of armored vehicles and trucks.
Looking south I saw pylons a mile or so away that ran southeast-northwest, parallel to the road. Three or four vehicles also headed southeast along the line of the pylons as if following them as a navigational aid. We were sandwiched between the two.
We cuddled each other for warmth, trying to keep our eyes open but frequently dozing off and waking up with a start. We had survived the night, and now I just hoped that we could hold out until last light again.
We sorted our feet out. This is done in such a way that at any one time only one person has one boot off. We were well used to harsh tabbing in tough conditions, but last night’s efforts had taken the biscuit. We had tabbed for twelve hours, covering well over 30 miles, in the worst weather conditions any of us had seen for a very long time. Our feet had taken a fearsome pounding.
Dinger remembered that Chris had been wearing a pair of GoreTex go-fasters that had set him back a hundred quid. “If he’s still running around, I bet his feet are Okay in them Gucci boots,” he said, massaging his sore toes.
We got some cold scoff down us. We wouldn’t cook because the ground was too open. We had enough sachets of food to last a few days yet; water was the more pressing concern.
We rested and plotted. The big plan now was to take the high ground tonight, get over it, then hit the low ground, which according to the map was flat gravel plain that would take us into the border. In theory we could get over the border that night if we really went for it. All it would take was another twelve hours all out tabbing. On the positive side, we weren’t carrying much weight because all we had was our belt kit and our weapons. And we had the incentive, which was to get out of Iraq and into Syria. We had no idea what the border was going to be like; we’d just have to find out when we got there.
We did our map studies again to make sure we all knew where we were, where we were going, and what we were likely to see on the way-which wasn’t a lot because we were working with air maps. The alignment of pylons and so forth is approximate on these maps, but we did know that we’d have a major built up area about three hours north of us to our right. That seemed to be the only fixed obstacle.
We were all recovering quite well now. We whispered bad jokes to each other as the hours passed, trying to keep up morale. Everything was beginning to feel all right again. We were still cold, but we had it under control. At least it wasn’t snowing or raining any more. I was confident that we would be able to do it in one last big effort.
It was at 1530 that we heard it.
Ding ding, baa baaa.
We really don’t need this, I said to myself.
I had a quick scan but couldn’t see anything. We hugged the ground. There was no hollering or shouting as there was before in the last compromise, just the sound of chuntering and a solitary bell. It got closer and closer. I looked up, and there was the head goat with a bell around his neck. Wherever he went, it seemed, the other goats followed, because his entourage came and joined him one by one. Soon there were ten of them standing gawping over the edge of the dip. They looked at us and we looked at them. I lobbed a couple of small pebbles at the head boy to try and shoo him away.
His response was to come forward even more, and the rest of the goats followed. They put their heads down and started chewing, and there were five sighs of relief. They were a bit premature. A few seconds later the old goatherd turned up. He must have been 70 if he was a day. He had a big woolly dish-dash on, with a baggy old cardigan over the top. His head was swathed in a shamag. Over his shoulder was a tatty leather satchel. He had beads in his hands and muttered “Allah” as he pushed them through his fingers.
He looked at us and didn’t miss a beat. No surprise, no fright, no nothing.
I smiled at him, as one does.
Totally nonchalantly, as if it was an everyday occurrence to find five foreigners huddling in a dip in the ground in the middle of nowhere, he squatted down beside us and started gob bing off. I didn’t have a clue what he was saying.
We gave him the greeting, “As salaam alaikum.”
He replied, “Wa alaikum as salaam.”
We shook his hand. This was bizarre. He was so friendly. I wondered if he even knew there was a war on. Within seconds we were all best mates.
I wanted to keep the conversation going, but our Arabic wasn’t quite up to it. Even as I spoke, I couldn’t believe what I heard myself saying next.
“Wayn al souk?” I asked.
Here we were, in the middle of nowhere, and I was asking him the way to the market.
He didn’t bat an eyelid, just pointed south.
“Good one,” Dinger said. “At least next time we’re here we’ll know the way to Sainsbury’s.”
Bob spotted a bottle in the old boy’s satchel. “Halib?” he asked.
The goatherd nodded that yes, it was milk, and passed the bottle around. Then he got out some smelly, minging dates from the bag and a bit of old bread, and we sat down and played the white man.
Mark stayed on his feet, having a casual look around. “He’s on his own,” he said, all smiles.
The goatherd pointed south again and waved his hand. “Jaysh,” he said, “jaysh.”
I raised a quizzical eyebrow at Bob.
“Army,” he translated. “Militia.”
Bob asked: “Wayn? Wayn jaysh?”
The old boy pointed back the way we had come.
We couldn’t understand if he meant: there’s loads of soldiers down there; or there’s loads of soldiers down there, and they’re looking for you; or are you with the soldiers from the jaysh back there? None of us could remember the Arabic for distance. We tried to do signs for far away and close.
All in all it was quite funny. There we were, sitting having a cosy kefuddle in the middle of the desert, in weather that was so bad we had nearly frozen to death.
We carried on with this for about half an hour, but we were getting to the point where a decision had to be made. Did we kill him? Did we tie him up and keep him until we moved out? Or did we just let him go and do his own thing? The only benefit to be gained by killing him was that nobody else would then know what was going on. But if the countryside was littered with the corpses of elderly members of the indigenous population and we got caught-which we had to assume was likely-then we could hardly expect red carpet treatment at the hands of our captors. If we tied him up to keep him out of play, he would be dead by first light anyway because of the cold. There was little doubt his body would be discovered. It looked as though every square foot of this country was patrolled by goats and herders.
If we let him go, who could he tell, what harm could he do? He had no transport, and as far as Mark could make out he was on his own. It was about 1600 hours now, and it would soon be last light. Even if he raised the alarm, by the time there was any reaction it would be dark and we’d be legging it towards the border. We might as well let him go. It was the SAS we were in, not the SS.
We made up our minds that when he decided to go, we’d watch him, wait until he got out of sight, then we’d put in a deception plan south.
Five minutes later he was giving his goodbyes, and off he shuffled with the goats, not a care in the world. We let him go for about a half mile until he disappeared into some dead ground, then we moved off. We went south for a few miles, then turned west.