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Then suddenly another job came up, for a team to go down and put extra security on the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi during a visit by Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secre�tary. They picked five of us who had done the bodyguards' course and ferried us down there. In Abu Dhabi we had a look round the Embassy, and settled into a flat-roofed bun�galow within the grounds, which were maybe a hundred yards square, and beautifully kept � a huge garden with irri�gated lawns, shrubs, flowerbeds and trees. The main Embassy building was two storeys high and quite large, and several other staff bungalows were dotted about. Local security was operating outside the walls of the compound, and we were to patrol inside. Up at Victor we were banned from going into town, but here there was nobody to keep an eye on us. Hurd was not due to arrive until 6p.m., and we had a couple of hours spare. Also, we were dressed inconspicuously in casual civilian clothes � polo shirts and corduroys � so we took our chance and went into town for a look round. It was strange, walking round the streets of a prosperous, gleaming new town, to find that everything seemed normal, with not a hint that a major war was about to erupt. It felt good to have a break from training, see a different culture, 16The One That Got Away and eat different food. After a meal we did some shopping, and bought little radios, miniature binoculars and a camera. I also bought a couple of shamags for myself, and another four or five for the guys still at Victor. Then we slipped back to the Embassy in time for the arrival of our star guest. When he came in, we saw him get out of the car and go into the building, so that we knew he was our responsibility for the time being. The situation, in the run-up to war, was enough to make anyone jumpy. We'd been getting reports which suggested that the Iraqis were capable of parachuting a special forces team into Abu Dhabi to take Hurd out � and at the time we had to treat them seriously. We thought they might have kamikaze types trained either to drop from the air or to come in by boat, because the Embassy was only about a hundred metres from the sea. After dark the perimeter wall was illuminated by lights that cast deep shadows, so that it would have been difficult to spot anyone hanging about. In the middle of the night one pair of our guys was on patrol in the compound and the other three of us were asleep in the bungalow, when somebody suddenly began screaming 'CONTACT! CONTACT!' at the top of his voice. Still half asleep, we leapt up and cocked our weapons, bumping into each other as we rushed about trying to make out where the enemy was. Just as we were about to burst out and sweep the compound, we realised that the person yelling was Paul, who'd been having a nightmare and had dreamt up the whole con�frontation. Somehow we settled down again, and in the morning, after Hurd had made an early departure, we whipped into Abu Dhabi again for breakfast of coffee and croissants. A couple of the guys bought telephone cards, so that they could call home. Back at Victor, nobody mentioned any�thing about having been in the town, and when I handed out the spare shamags, I said to the lads, 'Just don't tell anyone where they came from.' That little episode left us even more exhausted, and we told the OC we needed a day off because we were knack�ered. He made a compromise and let us off a navigation Stand By . . . Stand By . . . Go!17 exercise, so that we were able to get our heads down for an extra four-hour stretch. The Regiment had established a Forward Operating Base at Al Jouf, an airfield in the north-west of Saudi Arabia, and we knew that if we were deployed across the border it was from there that we would go in. When the air war began, on the night of 16/17 January, with coalition air�craft bombing targets in Iraq, we expected to be deployed at any moment. Although we didn't know it at the time, the Commander of British Forces in