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A Squadron |
The one half of the A squadron was, just like the other three groups, to destroy any mobile Scud missile-systems they could find. They took 6 Land rovers (type 110), one Unimog (kind of a big armored truck that carried their supplies), and 6 motorcycles to do the job. The Land rovers were fitted with GPMG and Browning M2 .50 machineguns, a MILAN anti-tank missile-system, and Mk-19 grenade launchers. In total, Alpha Two Zero was about 30 men strong, each Land rover + motorcycle carrying 4 men.
Mk-19 grenade launcher
Unimog
They had trouble crossing the border because Saddam had built a wall along it,
but eventually they contacted headquarters, who gave them the coordinates of the
place where one of the other groups had crossed it. The patrols where to drive
at night only, because they would easily be spotted during the day. After a few
days the patrol saw a vehicle coming towards them, and they were forced to
shoot two of the three occupants. The commander, Graham, was very nervous after
the shooting and didn't know what to do. Eventually they took the vehicle, the
two dead men and the POW because they didn't want to leave any trace. They
called for a Chinook to re-supply them and take the vehicle, body's and POW back
to Arabia. The Chinook came but didn't take the vehicle or the body's back.
Instead, it only took the Iraqi soldier and replaced Graham. Peter Ratcliffe was now their
new commander, and he'd brought another officer with him: Gazza. Gazza, actually
a nickname, was merely there for observation, and he didn't interfere with any decisions
or actions. Peter decided to blow up the Iraqi vehicle with the two bodies
inside, and then drive north towards the MSR, over wich most Scud's were
transported.
The patrol had trouble finding shelter during the day, because the terrain was
extremely flat, except for a couple of dry river beds, or wadi's. One or two
nights after the re-supply, the patrol drove right through a big Iraqi unit, but the Iraqi's
couldn't see that the patrol was British, even though they got within a few
hundred meters on both the left and right-hand side of the Land rovers. That
same night, one of the Land rovers hit the Unimog because the driver had fallen
asleep. That was understandable because they had
only slept for a couple of hours in about a week. Fortunately no-one got hurt
because since the patrol was driving slow to prevent it from being heard, it
wasn't such a big collision. They did though, have to
stop, set up another base camp, and repair the vehicle the next morning.
One or two days after that, they
drove on one of the many supply routes, wich they had been observing for hours
to find out that there was no traffic going on, and they saw man-hole covers
alongside the road. When they stopped the next morning to set up their base camp,
they sent a radio message to HQ to tell them about the covers. HQ radioed back
to them and told them that there were communication cables underneath the
covers, and that they had to go back and destroy them. They did exactly that.
The next night, the first Land rover in the column drove right into a wadi, and
it was no longer able to drive, so the patrol had to burry it, witch meant that
they now had 5 Land rovers left. Next, the patrol was to destroy a communication
center, witch was supposed to have about 30 guards. When they got to the next base camp,
HQ told them that the RAF had already bombed the camp, but that the
communication tower was still there, and that they had two days to destroy it,
otherwise, the RAF would come back to finish what they'd started. Cameron Spence
and Tony where to lead the reconnaissance team, but since they only had two days
to destroy the tower, they had to leave at sunset, and be back at dawn. That
meant that they
only had a few hours for the actual reconnaissance. The team came across a road
that had fencing on the side of it and a crash barrier in-between the two roads.
They decided that it would take to long to get through or over those two, and
that it would be best to drive along the road to look for any openings. They had
already driven for more than an hour when they finally saw one, and they reached the
camp with the tower not much later. However, the detour caused the team to
perform only a quick reconnaissance, and they couldn't get as close as they wanted to,
wich resulted in only a
small amount of information about the camp. In spite of that, Peter decided to
attack the next night, and do another small reconnaissance just before the attack.
Peter would lead the assault group. Buzz, Frank, Gazza, and Alec would go with
him to cover George, the demolition expert, who was to place the explosives.
Cameron, Tony and Chris, would take their Land rovers and take care
of the support-fire at long-range. They were to draw the
Iraqi's in their direction, should the situation escalate. Keith and Taff
would take the other two Land rovers and take care of the closer support-fire.
The Unimog had to be left unprotected in the base camp, and they wired it with
all the explosives they had, should any Iraqi's come near.
When everyone was in position, Frank and Gazza approached the tower very carefully to see if there was anyone
there, and there was a truck right beside it. They couldn't see what was inside
because the cabin was too high, so Frank opened the door while Gazza guarded the
back of the truck. Frank poked the muzzle of his weapon into the soldier's
stomach, to wake him up carefully, but the soldier reached for his weapon, and
Frank had to shoot him. For some reason, Gazza then emptied a whole magazine into the
back of the truck.
Now Iraqis were coming from every direction and Spence's
group had to fight off tens of them.
After the whole assault group had run across one hundred meters of flat terrain
while under fire, George and Buzz started placing explosives
while Dean and Taff, two guys from the closer support-fire group, had to fight
off many Iraqis while they were trying to protect the demolition experts. The situation
had escalated in less than five minutes, and there appeared to be 300 Iraqi
soldiers instead of 30. Spence, Tony, Scouse, Nick, Tom, Chris and a few others
were being fired upon from three sides; there were tens of soldiers running
towards them from the camp, and there was a 57mm anti-aircraft gun firing at
them from another direction, 200 meters away. That gun is so powerful, that two of
the guys in the Land rover that got hit by the gun, were swung out of it.
They're backs were turned to a 20 meter high talus, and there were Iraqi's
standing on it and shooting down on them. On top of all that, their 50 caliber
machinegun, a very powerful and in this case crucial weapon, got jammed. Now
they momentarily only had the Mk-19 grenade launcher, a Gimpy, the MILAN, and their personal
assault rifles left.
In the meanwhile, George and Buzz had successfully placed the explosives on the
tower, and they wanted to get the hell out of there, but couldn't find Taff and
Dean, whom were coming back to rest of the group, when an Iraqi soldier
jumped Taff. Dean was walking in front of him and only saw it when Taff, an
excellent boxer, had already knocked the Iraqi out. Roger was just about to
leave when he saw Dean and Taff, whom jumped in, and the Land rover drove off at
maximum speed towards the Emergency Rendez-vous, or ERV.
Spence's group finally got the 50 caliber working again, and some of them ran up
the talus to fight off the Iraqis there. They saw tens of trucks on the other
side of it, and they got fired upon by the 57mm gun. Chris ran down the talus and
fired the MILAN at the 57mm. It never fired back. H, the radioman, was trying to
contact the assault group, and when he finally did, they told him that they were already gone. Spence then immediately ordered everyone to get the hell in their Land
rovers and the hell out of there. When everyone was back at the Unimog, it was a
miracle that there were no casualties. Everyone had bullet holes
in their clothes and backpacks, but not in their bodies.
They needed a lot of supplies after this attack, more than one Chinook could
carry, and so HQ came up with the idea to let all four groups come to the
same place, to be re-supplied there by a column of trucks. This passed off without any
problems. Peter was told by HQ that he was to investigate a place called
"The Iron Triangle". Since every side of that triangle was a road,
he sent Cameron, Tom, Nick, Taff and a few others out to find a way to get
into that place without being spotted. When they got back, Peter took everyone to the triangle and they
found out that there was another communication area, only this time it looked
more like a bunch of antenna's. They used their Global Positioning System, or GPS,
to
determine the coordinates of the place, and then they sent those to HQ, so that if their
commanders wanted it destroyed, they could send in the RAF or the USAF.
After that reconnaissance mission, the patrol returned safely back to Saudi
Arabia.
The other half of A Squadron were up against the following problems: A Pinkie with Sgt. Major Bobby McCann got stuck in a tank-ditch near the airport Medesis. When they tried to get out, Bobby got heavily wounded by Iraqi gunfire. He told the other two guys who were with him, to leave him alone and make a run for it, he would cover them. Bobby McCann was captured and tortured but he didn't spill anything, he received medical attention in Baghdad and was released after the war.