'Iraq is always with you': a veteran's memories of the war
A former British tank commander on how the guilt of knowing what we inflicted on the Iraqi people sits at terrible odds with his thrilling recollections of the sheer excitement of conflict
All the commentary surrounding the Iraq invasion 10 years on encourages retrospection but I think most veterans, like me, would agree that talk of anniversaries makes scant difference. It doesn't matter whether it's five, nine or 10 years after the event. Iraq is always with you, the sounds from the minarets, desert winds carrying ghosts.
Everyone involved had subjective experiences, some worse, some better but transcending that for most Iraq veterans, I'll hazard, is the mind-numbing sadness at how it all turned out, the unfathomable human and financial cost of the conflict.
That might explain how after resigning my commission in 2010 I deleted all military photos from my Facebook profile, and sold what clothing and equipment I could to an army-surplus store, making sure no related images or emblems remained as I tried to carve out a new life. But all the while I greedily and willingly conjured scenes of my time in Iraq, reliving, even relishing, my experiences.
The invasion on 20 March 2003 held little personal drama for me, for while tanks from two of my regiment's squadrons made a heady dash across the Mesopotamian sands I was in our barracks in Germany, packing paintings in the officers' mess for a forthcoming regimental move back to UK.
As TV news reported the stunning progress by coalition forces and the capitulation of Iraq's military, I was immersed in bubble wrap, sticky tape and endless wooden boxes. To emphasise my removal, surrounding me were images of my 19th-century antecedents charging Sikh infantry squares at the Battle of Aliwal , riding into immortal verse at Balaclava, outflanking the dervishes at Omdurman, and engaged in many other exotic expeditions.
After everyone returned from the invasion, tanned and lean, with tales of high drama, my deployment in April 2004 on Operation TELIC 4 for a six-month tour couldn't come soon enough. A photo of me standing with fellow troop leaders in front of a desert-coloured Russian T55 tank, brought back after the Gulf war, on the day of departure to RAF Brize Norton for our onward flight to Basra , shows us looking cheery and keen for adventure. We weren't to be disappointed by what we found in Iraq.
At that point we weren't part of something that would lead to an estimated 120,000 civilian deaths, and demolish a country, and there weren't as many wailing Iraqi mothers thumping their chests. Friends hadn't been killed in downed helicopters or decapitated by rolling vehicles; the gung-ho ignorance of soldiers hadn't been left unchecked, and the consequences of the military hierarchy's hubris hadn't caught up with it yet.
We were presented with a scene of opportunity: contractors were settling in, apparently useful and minus the greed and inefficiency that would emerge later; the UK's Department for International Development seemed set to play an important, constructive role. And as for the stale rhetoric and grandiose concepts of nation-building and bestowing democracy, I had neither the time nor the inclination to pay attention. I had a troop of tanks to run and, not being the greatest military mind to venture onto the battlefield, was busy enough.
So, unencumbered by what came to pass, I could appreciate, or so I thought, some of the finer points of expeditionary life. I defy anyone to ride in a Challenger 2 tank , looking back over the commander's cupola at 20 armoured vehicles kicking up curtains of sand, speeding across the smooth desert while enveloped in warm winds as the gunner traverses the turret to test fire the coaxially mounted machine gun at right angles to the hull hurtling forward, and then claim not to have enjoyed themselves.
Even when things went wrong you could come out grinning. On a night patrol I found myself huddled behind a truck making a farcical pirouette as bullets pinged off the metal all around me. Those rounds came from friendly troops engaging the enemy on the far side of the truck. I was terrified and ashamed of getting into that position but managed to extract myself. I returned to base with the rest of the patrol, enjoyed some back slaps all round, and couldn't wait for the next firefight.
"War offers endless exotic experiences, enough 'I couldn't fucking believe its' to last a lifetime," said the American writer William Broyles after serving as an infantry commander in Vietnam. Part of the lure, he pointed out, is the fundamental human passion to witness and see things: "What the Bible calls the lust of the eye and the marines in Vietnam called eye fucking."
There was plenty of that in Iraq: from Chinook helicopters slicing through the heat haze to mortar illumination rounds trickling down the face of the night like fiery teardrops throwing shifting shadows on to the desert floor. Or sitting in a Hercules transport plane as the interior lights turned off, replaced by a lone red hazard light as the pilot executed a steep descent to the runway to avoid enemy fire; tank turrets flickering with flames after rocket-propelled grenade warheads exploded; a market stall dangling off the end of a barrel as a tank motored through the empty streets of Amara. And smoking a shisha beneath the globes of the Kuwait Towers during two days of operational standdown â the eye-popping slide show never ended.
The aural experience could be just as rich: Warrior armoured vehicles letting loose six rounds of 30mm auto-fire, a beautiful sound when you needed it. Closed down in my turret on a night-time operation into Amara, I listened entranced to the voice on the radio of the American operator in a C-130 Spectre gunship aircraft â call-sign Basher-75 â discussing the acquisition of targets on the ground. "Keep your heads low; it's going to get hot down there," he drawled. I'd never heard anyone sound so utterly damn cool.
I don't know exactly where the attraction lay. Perhaps the synthesis of man and machine up above, all-powerful with a bristling array of weaponry trained on insurgents, omniscient with night vision and radar systems, or knowing it had my back and could be called on no matter what, but there was something seductive about such moments.
And yet, at the same time, I know how wrong these experiences were â especially Basher-75 circling malevolently in the night sky; how, while I was bouncing off the inside of my turret with glee, Iraqi children huddled and wept in their beds, scared out of their minds by fire fights raging around their homes and the ominous rumble of armoured vehicle columns; how the market stall dangling off that barrel â which we all had a good laugh over â represented some faceless Iraqi's livelihood.
But that didn't click at the time. You were carried away with the momentum, the zany mix of action, humour flicking from dark to slapstick, the stress, close shaves and adrenaline. It all made for an intoxicating experience and was possibly, sad to say, the best thing I, and I imagine others, had ever done. Ever since it has been like something has gone out of my life forever.
For it wasn't just the unparalleled sensory spectrum, there was a communal satisfaction, tapping into a primordial core, which came from taking part. That blissful sense of community started with the soldiers, wonderfully skilled and maddeningly headstrong, insubordinate at times but ultimately doggedly looking out for each other.
Obviously it wasn't a total love-in. Some soldiers still disliked you, or you resented other officers, but such incidences tended to be exceptions to the norm that was a sense of comradeship the civilian world just can't seem to replicate. In Iraq you had the most tangible relationships you've ever had: people didn't look through you every day. It was the most utopian experience we'll ever know â possessions, backgrounds and ranks counted for very little, the group was everything; forged by what amounted to a love that transcended class, personality and education. But now it's wrenching to meet up with those friends and comrades as each of us know how the special realm that sustained our intense comradeship is gone. We're marooned among the mundane demands and petty recriminations of everyday life.
But no collective amount of such reminiscences is enough to outweigh our immense failure in delivering to the Iraqi people what we promised, compounded by what may be the UK's greatest crime: having little if nothing to do with rebuilding the country it helped dismember. Reports of explosions killing dozens of Iraqis seem unending as the country continues to be cleaved by sectarian strife, while the UK watches on, if that. The British consulate in Basra, scene of my second Iraq tour in 2006, was closed down at the end of 2012. It doesn't appear that making amends for what's happened to Iraq is a priority for our nation.
I'm not, and never have been, a violent person; a halfhearted attempt at a schoolboy fight in which I got thoroughly licked persuaded me never to try that again. I don't actually know if I killed anyone in Iraq despite doing my best to engage targets, or, should I say, people. There was, for example, a man â he might have been a teenager, who knows? â holding an RPG launcher at a building corner in my tank sight whom my gunner engaged after I gave the order. Next there was a small column of dust in my sight; once it dissipated, he'd gone.
Had he collapsed to be hauled away? I hope he got himself safely behind the corner in time. I never want to fire again at another person, not even an animal, and, if I ever have children, I sincerely hope they never want to or have to fight. And yet, at the oddest, most random times, I find my thoughts turning back eagerly to a war I don't believe in and the consequences of which I'm ashamed.
What can I say? I miss it. I miss traversing turrets, Basher-75, those feisty, irrepressible soldiers, lines of green tracer fire arching lazily in the night sky, gas flares burning on the horizon, the operator on the other side of the turret screaming: "Loaded!" and a whole lot more.
A month before leaving the army I stayed at the London flat of an army friend. An electrician called by one morning and asked about a photograph of my friend in uniform, which prompted me to ask about his accent. He was from Kosovo. After telling him I'd been there for two months at the beginning of my military career, he put down his tool box and shook my hand energetically, thanking me. I felt a fraud, Iraq a silent, condemning attendant, and had to turn so he didn't see tears welling in my eyes.
What can I, or any veteran, say to an Iraqi? Whatever desperate words are chosen, they're not likely to result in a handshake, nor should they, which breaks my heart and always will. Damn you, Basher-75; damn all of us for what we did or failed to do in a time and place I'll always long for.
Iraq Middle East and North Africa Military James Jeffrey guardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
