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tremendous amount of time getting bogged down and having to dig the Land-Rovers out. When we had a day doing vehicle contact drills, everything became farcical: we tried to fire the gympis off sandbags piled on the bonnet, which was hopeless, and when the drivers reversed hard into a J-turn, guys started being thrown out. With the whole squadron watching the range-work, a big Australian called Stan was flung out at high speed and cartwheeled half-way across the desert with his gympi attached to him, so that he was burnt by the hot barrel. We laughed at the time, but underneath we were alarmed by the thought that we might be sent across the border in these vehicles and might have to use them for real: what looked funny now might easily be disastrous later. We also experimented with six of us standing in the back of the Un�imog and firing from there: it was like the chuck wagon in a cowboy film, with the good guys popping off at the Indians. 14The One That Got Away But we soon found that it was impossible to hit anything, because at any speed the vehicle bounced up and down out�rageously. In general, it was pathetic trying to operate with the wrong equipment, and altogether our training was poor. The other two squadrons had far better facilities. The reason for this was simple: they were the ones who were supposed to be going into Iraq; at that stage we were no more than BCRs. Nevertheless, we were still hoping that we'd be deployed. Wild ideas started coming up. There was talk of `B' Squadron parachuting into Kuwait City, which had been occupied by Iraqi forces. The idea was that we would cap�ture a big block of flats and direct mortar and artillery fire on to Iraqi positions. Also, being snipers, we could fire from the building and take individuals out that way. The originator of this plan � whoever he was � didn't seem to have realised that once the Iraqis saw where we were, they would simply blow the shit out of the place � and we would have no means of escape. The RAF planners actively considered throwing us out of a Hercules at 400 or 600 feet (the usual height is between 800 and 1,000), and insisted that we made a prac�tice jump at that height. One suicide mission had been proposed for `B' Squadron during the Falklands war, and now here was another. Half the guys were going to be knackered by the jump alone. On the SP team, I had been on one practice jump in which six�teen out of thirty men were injured � not killed, but put out of action. This time we had drawn and fitted the parachutes, and we were about to walk out of the hangar for the training jump when our own OC cancelled the option. Immediately, another rumour came up, even crazier � we were to jump into Baghdad and take out essential installa�tions such as power-stations. But soon it was found that cruise missiles could do the job from a distance of several hundred miles. The desert around the base was exactly as I'd expected it to be � hot and sandy, with plenty of dunes and undulations to give cover. In spite of the limitations imposed by our lack Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go!15 of equipment it was good for training, and we were working long hours: up at six, train all day, have dinner, sit down for a couple of hours, and then, once it was fully dark, do a night navigation exercise, before going to bed at ten or eleven. Several of the guys had radios, and when the six o'clock news came on the BBC World Service, everyone would crowd round to listen. High-level diplomatic negotiations were going on in Geneva and elsewhere as world leaders struggled to avoid a confrontation, and from one night to the next the chances of war went up and down. For recreation, there was a school of card-players, and some people would read � anything from Shakespeare to Viz comics. I'd taken a load of paperbacks by Tom Sharpe, who always makes me laugh. On the whole, though, we were too tired to read or play, and we began to suffer from sleep-deprivation.