MASSACRE OF THE REDCAPS

[goldie ex rmp]

These views are not my own but from a RMP site i use but i though you may like to read them.
"Exemplo-Ducemus" By Example We Lead
MASSACRE OF THE REDCAPS

Breathtaking courage. Catastrophic mistakes. Told for the first time, this is the full, chilling story behind the slaughter of six British Redcaps by a braying Iraqi mob. And it raises yet MORE deeply disturbing questions about this benighted war.

By Mark Nicol

Lovingly, he dressed the battered body in service uniform —that of a lance-corporal in the Royal Military Police. Then Reg Keys poured a few drops if Jack Daniels whisky onto the pallid lips. Alone in a chapel of rest near the family home in North Wales, he was having a last drink with the son he was so proud of.

As a former paramedic, Reg Keys was not squeamish. He had read every word of the post-mortem report, and knew that the mob who murdered his son Tom in southern Iraq had inflicted no fewer than 31 gunshot wounds.

What haunted him was that there were marks of a ligature around the left ankle, and indications that Tom's leg had been bent back when some of the bullets went in. The pathologist had suggested he might have been trussed up when he was shot. Reg had visions of his son dangling from the ceiling of the police station where The mob had killed him, and it gave him recurrent nightmares.

In fact, the ligature was nothing more than a strap Tom had been wearing for a sprained ankle. But when the Army realised this, they didn't bother to tell Reg, so he was left with those appalling images flashing through his mind.

There was so much Reg Keys wasn't told, and couldn't find out, about how and why his 20-vear-old boy had been killed, along with five other members of his Redcap detachment while performing routine duties months after the war in Iraq was officially over.

His anger over those needless deaths, in a conflict that may well have been unlawful is the reason why Mr Keys is running against Tony Blair in his Sedgefield constituency in next week's General Election. He wants answers—and, so far, he feels all he has had is a cover-up.

The massacre of the Redcaps was the biggest single loss of life inflicted by enemy forces on the British Army overseas since the Falklands War. But it was only part of a far wider battle that day, whose full story has— until now—never been told.

As I will show in this series, which continues in Monday’s Mail, the desperate close-quarters combat in the town of Majar al-Kabir was the most savage and intense to have involved British forces during the whole Iraq campaign.

Even as Tom Keys and his colleagues were being trapped, beaten and ritualistically slain in the police station, men of the Parachute Regiment were fighting for their lives in the surrounding streets, in a terrifying battle that eventually left up to 100 Iraqis dead.

The clashes were so merciless that I can reveal the Paras were even forced to kill small children being used as human shields by the Iraqis. By the time reinforcements finally arrived, they were down to their last rounds of ammunition.

Indeed, only sheer luck prevented the British death toll being much greater that day. Iraqi bullets blasted 100 holes in the unarmoured fuselage of an RAF rescue helicopter, wounding seven of the 20 men on board and missing the gearbox by two inches.

Many of the facts of the encounter have been suppressed, not least because it exposes disastrous equipment shortages, failures of leadership and communication breakdowns.

At one point the Paras—some of them just teenagers and weeks out of training—were only 100 yards from the besieged Redcaps, but had no idea they were there. Disgracefully, they have since been accused of abandoning the men to their fate, but the truth is that they would have fought and perhaps died trying to save their comrades, had they only known what was happening.

At the heart of the whole chaotic affair was the fatal assumption by British commanders that in July 2003, with Saddam defeated, Iraq was safe and secure for Coalition forces.

As a result of this judgment, soft berets had replaced hard hats, body armour had gone back into stores and the soldiers were on restricted supplies of ammunition, deemed appropriate for their role as peacekeepers rather than warriors.

But the reality—as those on the ground knew—was that Iraq was far from under control, however much the military authorities and the politicians wanted to pretend it was.

What lay outside the trenches and sand barricades that protected the British garrison at Camp Abu Naji, just south of the city of Amarah, was an increasingly hostile population, resentful of the Westerners' continued presence — and armed to the teeth.

Yet somehow, into this maelstrom of hate, a group of lightly armed men was allowed to go on a mission to build friendly links with the locals.

TOM KEYS was desperate to go home—and, with better fortune, would already have been there.

The 156 Provost Company had mustered 75 Redcaps (named after the distinct headgear worn by the Army's military policemen) for the Iraq campaign.

But 50, including their most senior personnel, had now returned to headquarters in the UK. Even the commanding officer, Major Bryn Parry-Jones had gone back, leaving a youthful lieutenant in charge.

Tom Keys Corporals Russ Aston, Si Miller, PauI Long and Ben Hyde, and their section leader, Sergeant Simon Hamilton-Jewell, were among the unlucky 25 staying on.

They didn't think much of the CO going home before them—it didn't meet their definition of leadership—and they were so short-handed that they were having to work morning, noon and night.

During the war itself, their job as policemen had been largely to direct military traffic and control prisoners of war and refugees.

But now they had been given responsibility for rebuilding and retraining the defunct Iraqi police force.

This was a critical task— restoring law and order in an essentially lawless land was crucial if the Bush and Blair vision of a revitalised, democratic Iraq was to be achieved. But with just 25 men to achieve it, in increasingly difficult conditions, morale among the Redcaps was at rock-bottom.

The heat was intense—temperatures could soar to 50C by mid-morning—and in the words of the normally cheerful Ben Hyde, writing home to his parents, 'you get no food, no sleep, you can't wash properly and you get treated like sh**'.

Worse still, their efforts to gain the trust or the Iraqis through patience, understanding and a non-aggressive stance were making only limited headway.

On the morning of Tuesday June 24, Hamilton-Jewell — known to all as H-J — planned to lead his six-man section on a tour of Iraqi police stations south of the camp.

A 41-year-old veteran of campaigns in Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia, he had discussed the operation with the stand-in CO Lieutenant Richard Phillips—half his age—and been given the go-ahead.

In the ops room at Abu Naji, H-J now logged the details of the police stations he intended to visit. He expected to be back in camp by late afternoon.

At 09.10 hours, the six Redcaps set off in Land Rovers carrying rifles with just 50 rounds each. Before returning to England, Major Parry-Jones had overruled his men's wishes and agreed to reduce ammunition levels because he considered that 'everything looked rosy' in terms of security.

The convoy drove out of the camp beneath a stone archway, a landmark representing the boundary between two worlds: British and Iraqi, safe and unsafe.

What they didn't know was that just a few miles ahead, two 12-man teams of Paras were heading for exactly the same destination—the seething town of Majar al-Kabir.

The Paras shared the same base as the Redcaps, and that morning the men of 8 Platoon had been ordered in to Majar to show 'a strong presence’ on the ground.

It followed a riot two days earlier: the 'Toms'— slang for private soldiers — of 8 Platoon's Alpha section had been sunbathing naked in the courtyard of the Majar police station when a chanting, hissing mob surrounded them.

The Iraqis wrongly believed that weapons searches were to be carried out in their homes, and they were furious about it. They stoned the building, smashed windows and wrecked the Paras' two vehicles. Plastic bullets were fired at the crowd, and one struck an Iraqi on the head.

Although the Paras were rescued by reinforcements, it had been a serious incident and they knew the locals were in a very ugly mood. 'The next time we go into that town, they'll be waiting for us with weapons,' one Para commented.

Today, 'the next time' had arrived. Alpha section was now joined by its counterpart, Bravo—a doubling of manpower in response to the increased threat — travelling in two four-wheel-drive Pinzgauer all-terrain vehicles and a four-ton DAF truck.

They would take radios and two satellite phones to keep in touch though their leader, Lt Ross Kennedy, was all too aware of their unreliability and had struggled to get through to the-ops room during the riot two days before, when dry air and power lines had seriously hampered reception.

The trucks were also prone to mechanical problems because of the desert heat and dust (for reasons unknown, spraying anti-perspirant into the air intake often helped to start them) and each man had been issued with just 100 rounds for his A2 personal rifle with 200 rounds for each of the platoon's general-purpose .machine-guns.

It was a tiny fraction of the ammunition they had carried during the war itself, and phosphorus and high-explosive grenades had also been withdrawn since, technically, the Paras were now on peaceful operations. They had not carried bayonets since one was stolen by local children.

The mood awaiting them in Majar al-Kabir was deeply resentful and aggressive. Two Army Land Rovers mounted with machine-guns had already made a sweep through the town earlier that morning, and reported receiving 'death stares' from the locals.

The town's 60,000 inhabitants were so-called Marsh Arabs, a proud people whose distinctive customs and deep sense of tribal honour Saddam had tried and failed to crush.

They had resisted him and thrown out his Ba'ath party supporters well before the British arrived to supposedly 'liberate' them, and the riot two days previously had been a warning that they were determined to make Majar a no-go zone for Coalition forces.

When the Paras' convoy arrived in the town, their first stop was the headquarters of the supposedly friendly Iraqi militia. Leaving Bravo section behind Lt Kennedy led Alpha out on foot patrol, warily moving towards the town centre.

They had been gone only a few minutes when a 4x4 vehicle roared towards them, kicking up dust as it braked. The leader of the militia poked out his bald head, warning them to venture no further. 'It's not safe'' he said. 'Bad men there. You will be shot at.' But the soldiers were under orders to show a presence and Lt Kennedy knew that simply turning away would be seen as a sign of weakness. If they couldn't patrol by foot, they would have to do it by vehicle.

While Alpha section took up a defensive position on the road, he radioed Bravo's men and ordered them to mount the Pinzgauers and head for the souk — a labyrinth of bazaars, stalls and shopping booths.

As the vehicles pushed through the narrow streets of the market, angry eyes bored into the Paras' backs and Iraqis crowded around. The walls were newly decorated with anti-U.S. and anti-British graffiti.

The Paras were nervous, even though they knew their mounted machine-guns were powerful enough to turn concrete walls into dust in seconds. They tucked their rifles tighter beneath their shoulders and hunkered down as the Pinzgauers chugged along.

'Stay calm. Stay alert,' barked an NCO. 'Shout if you see anyone armed.'

The hostility of the crowd was palpable, and it was not long before the first volleys of rocks clattered off the windscreens. 'Cheeky little t**ts,' muttered one of the Paras.

A few months ago, the same youths had shaken their hands, begging them to pass on congratulations to Tony Blair for toppling Saddam. Now they wanted blood.

Angry voices began to screech out from speakers on a mosque: 'They are coming to search for weapons, to tear our houses apart. We mustn't let them. Arm yourselves.' The crowds began to chant: 'La, la, Amerika Ia, la, Amerika (No, no, America).'

The Paras had anticipated a hot reception, but not one as fractious as this. They could sense the situation slipping out of control. A mob of 200 was closing in, and fists slammed onto the bonnets of Bravo's vehicles.

'They've come to rape our women,' the ringleaders shouted. 'Attack them, attack them!' Out of sight, Iraqi youths gathered more rocks and men began bringing out rifles.

The barrage of missiles intensified. 'We're in the sh*te here.' ... 'You're not wrong. There's hundreds of them.' ... We'll have to be more aggressive.'

The Paras knew from Northern Ireland that using plastic bullets could inflame as well as calm a situation, but with the Iraqis refusing to back off, they had little choice. The first baton round was fired amid a plume of white smoke.

The crowd surged, leaping up and down, but they did not run. The Paras were alarmed. 'It hasn't worked,' one cried. 'They're not backing off. This is turning to rat sh*t.'

'It's got the look of Mogadishu,' said another. He had not been to Somalia, but he had seen the film Black Hawk Down. 'Don't like the look of this.'

They fired over the heads in front live ammo this time. It did the trick the Iraqis stopped in their tracks. But a line had now been crossed. The 'white tribe'— as the locals saw the soldiers — had fired on them. They felt honour-bound to fire back.

From a window, rifle bullets cracked the air. The Paras opened up with their machine-guns. Iraqi gunmen went down. Suddenly, a fuII-scale battle was underway. As the mayhem intensified, part of the mob split away.

An elderly Iraqi would later recall seeing a dead body and being told that British troops had shot him. 'And what is happening now?' he asked. Two Iraqis with rocket-propelled guns slung over their shoulder told him: 'We're going to the police station.'

The Redcaps had arrived at the police station at Majar some 45 minutes earlier. All was quiet.

A local interpreter was there to meet them, having cycled from his nearby home. He, H-J, Russ and Ben went inside while Paul, Si and Tom stayed outside in the Land Rovers.

It was due to be a quick visit. Soon they would be off down the road to another town, another police station. And hopefully before long, a fortnight at the most, they would be gone completely and back in the UK.

Paul longed for his mother's rice pudding. Tom just wanted to be anywhere but in Iraq, which he had come to hate with a passion. Si was probably thinking of his girlfriend Emma, a female Redcap who had been working alongside him in Iraq.

They were supposed to be getting married next month, but Si wanted to put it off. He felt too young to be tied down, and had written to his mother: 'The stress of war makes you realise how precious life is. You've got to make the most of every single second, and believe me when I get back I'm going to.'

Inside the police station, a canopy of trees shaded the central courtyard, and 50 local policemen sat idling around. Dressed in civilian clothes, they hardly looked like an effective law enforcement body. Faced with policing a town with as many weapons as citizens, their standard operating procedure was not to venture onto the streets.

H-J, Russ and Ben were discussing the refurbishment of the station with Hassan the police chief, when the sound of gunfire from the town interrupted them. The three Redcaps exchanged concerned glances.

They were not to know that in the souk there had already been fatalities. With Iraqi lives lost, a blood feud had begun. It was now 'written', as the locals would say, that revenge had to be exacted.

It didn't matter that the Redcaps had nothing to do with the killings in the souk. Every white man in Majar now belonged to the 'murderer tribe'. Some would have to die for Iraqi honour to be restored.

What precisely happened next will never be known. None of the British soldiers at the police station survived to tell. The locals who witnessed the events gave contradictory accounts.

What I have been able to piece together comes from the official Army investigation forensic evidence and scores of interviews, including the statement of the Iraqi interpreter.

At the front of the police station the Redcaps saw armed men gathering. 'Get the vehicles inside,' H-J ordered. His men sprinted to the Land Rovers but had time only to collect their rifles, which had been left there as part of the Redcap policy of keeping as friendly and unthreatening a profile as possible.

Some of the Iraqi police immediately left, promising to investigate the trouble, more probably to escape. Others were ordered by H-J to line up outside the station, facing the crowd, a text-book first move to try to defuse the crisis.

But when the local police saw the mob's size and ferocity, they retreated back inside. They didn't intend to stay there—they knew the station's walls offered little protection and could be scaled easily. They knew, too, that they had been marked out by their compatriots as collaborators and traitors.

They kept on running, across the courtyard, towards a cell in a far corner. There they began frantically trying to break the barred windows on the outside wall so they could squeeze through and get away.

The Redcaps stood their ground outside, but this was a situation they could hardly have expected and were not trained to deal with. Throughout the Iraq campaign their letters home had reassured their loved ones they were in no danger because their duties were so dull and routine.

Now they were in deep trouble. Two of them climbed onto the station roof and appealed for calm —but the mob would have none of it. They jeered and waved their rifles in derision. Some began firing in the air.

'Save yourselves!' Hassan, the Iraqi police chief, shouted to the six Britons. 'Leave with us.'

'It's our duty to stay,' one of the Redcaps replied.

'No, you should leave with us!' Hassan begged again. 'You'll be safe with us if you come.'

But H-J and his men were unmoved. They were sticking to the Redcaps' motto — Exemplo Ducemus — By Example We Lead.

'We will not run away,' one of them told Hassan. Suddenly, a cheer went up as a British Land Rover was set ablaze. Thick smoke consumed the cabin and billowed through its front windows.

H-J now had an extra problem. His VHF radio for calling in help had been in the burning Land Rover, and—unlike the Paras— the Redcaps had not taken up the option of carrying satellite phones with them.

All that was left was the police station's telephones — and no Coalition forces numbers could be dialled from the Iraqi system. H-J told one of the few remaining Iraqi police to go inside and ring the police station in a nearby town.

'Tell them our situation is grave and we're besieged by a big mob,' H-J said. 'Then get yourselves to safety.'

On the far side of the courtyard, the Iraqi policemen were queuing up to push each other through a window to escape. The interpreter was among them. As he took flight, he looked back to see the mob climbing on the police station roof.

JUST a few streets away, Bravo section — led by Sgt Gordon 'Robbo' Robertson, one of the Paras' hardest men—had temporarily pulled clear of the fighting in the souk, accelerating away in their Pinzgauers, pursued by a hail of Iraqi bullets. But in the meantime, the sounds of gunfire had carried to Alpha, waiting at militia headquarters. Lt Kennedy guessed Bravo were under attack and led Alpha in the DAF truck towards the sound of the shots:

Heavy fire was soon bursting all around them. They ran from their truck—too big a target for the lethal rocket-propelled grenades the Iraqis seemed to have in abundance — and took cover where they could.

Rounds chased their heels across the road as two of them ran for shelter in a house but its Iraqi occupants refused to let them in. ‘No, no, go away!’ they shouted.

Most of the men lay under the truck, which stood at the corner of a crossroads. Astonishingly, it must now have been visible from the police station, but none of the Paras —fighting for their fives—saw the Redcaps or their Land Rovers.

Bullets were pinging off the Tarmac and Iraqis were rushing forward to take better aim at the men under the wagon. The Paras opened up with a heavy machinegun, and more Iraqi bodies littered the ground.

It was clear that-the only way out was to get back on the truck. 'We're going to remount and extract to the edge of the town,' Kennedy ordered.

But would the DAF start? It rarely did first time—the Coalition fuel disagreed with its engine. Instead, they would have to jump-start it— under enemy fire.

The men heaved away at the back of the truck, slowly setting it in motion, while two of their number tried holding back the advancing Iraqis with the machine-gun. 'Come on, for f***'s sake. Don't stall on us now.'

The truck rolled forwards, but was still not moving fast enough to start. Iraqis were getting closer. 'Jesus, start, you bastard!'

Miraculously, it coughed into life. The men piled in, the driver floored the accelerator and they were away. From an alleyway, two Iraqis took aim at the speeding target. 'Enemy right!' yelled the driver, and from the 'crow's nest' on the cabin top, a Para shot one gunman while the others rained lead on his accomplice. The threat had been neutralised.

Soon, Alpha were clear of the mob and the town. Relief washed over them. 'Jesus, I didn't think we'd get out of there. I thought the f***ers had me. Thank God they all seemed to change mags at the same time.'

'And what about that bloody bump start! F*** Black Hawk Down, that was Four-Tonner down!'

But, for all the chatter, they were not clear of trouble. From headquarters, Kennedy Iearned that Bravo section had once more been caught by the mob. They were surrounded and running out of ammo. Alpha, having just escaped with their lives, would have to go back in.

Here was a real test of leadership for the 23-year-old officer as he turned to his men and delivered the news. Inside, he was shaking. What if they refused?

But the men didn’t hesitate. Their comrades were in trouble, ‘Let’s go,’ said Lance-Corporal Mark Weadon.

They clambered onto the truck and rumbled back inti Majar al-Kabir, even more nervous than before. Suddenly, Iraqi gunmen were running towards them, front and rear, left and right. Bullet holes appeared in the cabin door, the windscreen cracked.

‘F***! Contact front!’ Bullets were peppering the whole truck, passing in one side and out of the other.

The enemy fire was returned with interest, but there was no defence against shoulder-fired grenade launches. One hurtled towards the truck, only to be deflected at the last second by a single electricity wire.

The men threw themselves out of the vehicle and pressed themselves into the gutter for protection. Rounds pinged off the masonry around them. Private Tim May was certain he was about to die. The faces of his children flashed before him.

At the police station, bullets were also crashing around the Redcaps. H-J at last ordered his men to yield their ground and take shelter inside. For an hour, he and his comrades had valiantly tried to calm the increasingly frenzied crowd without making any use of their own weapons. It was a noble gesture and true to their non-aggressive principles, but one which had now left them trapped.

As the Redcaps ran in through the doorway, a shot rang out from the mob and 21-year-old Si Miller stumbled. His fingers pawed at the wall, marking it with a bloody handprint A trail of blood charted its progress around the courtyard, each of his strides shorter than the last.

His mates ripped his uniform away to expose the wounds and bound them with dressings and bandages, but there was no morphine to ease his pain. Phials of the drug, standard-issue during the war, had been recalled in case anyone was tempted to use them to commit suicide.

With a man down severely wounded, getting away would now be even more difficult than before. In the courtyard, H-J signalled Tom Keys to take up a firing position covering the entrance.

Keys was an ex-Para and the only one of the six with experience of a major fire-fight—having fought in Operation Barras in Sierra Leone, when a combined unit of Paras and SAS rescued British servicemen from the notorious West Side Boys militia.

In the jungle, Keys had taken on the rebel fighters with a machinegun and 600 rounds. Now, as a military policeman crouching down and levelling his rifle at the door, he had just 50 bullets against the armed mob about to break in.

Then, out of the blue, something extraordinary happened. Outside the police station, an old man, his face the texture of leather, called on the Iraqis around him to hold their fire.

His age commanded respect, and the gunmen did as they were told. 'I am going inside, so do not shoot,' he told them.

The old man shuffled inside the doorway and walked to where H-J stood like a protector over Si’s body, the life now draining out of it.

Beyond, H-J he could see into a storage room where PauL Ben and Russ crouched behind a makeshift barricade of tables and cabinets. Russ was bleeding—a long-range shot had winged him.

The mob outside had already lost patience and charged into the courtyard, coming to a halt in front of the old man. Everything now depended on him as the police station was turned into a macabre court room.

The old man was determined to find a peaceful resolution, pleading: 'Killing is unnecessary.' The Redcaps had not been responsible for the deaths in the souk, he argued. 'This is not of their making. Leave them be.'

But he was shouted down by people claiming to be relatives of those killed. From outside came the chants of hundreds of town people. They, too, wanted blood.

The ringleaders quickly tired of the old man's arguments 'Leave or you will be killed as well, they said, pushing him aside.

H-J stood in the doorway, his colleagues behind him and Si's tody at his feet. Time was running out. He must never have felt so alone...

CONTINUING ON MONDAY: The missing minutes that could have saved them.

•ABRIDGED extract from LAST ROUND by Mark Nicol, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on May 12 at £16.99. copyright: Mark Nicol, 2005.

[goldie ex rmp]

Daily Mail, Monday, 2 May, 2005.

MASSACRE OF THE REDCAPS – Part Two

A REMARKABLE new book, based on hours of interviews with British soldiers and local witnesses, reveals the full, chilling story behind the slaughter of six British military policemen by an Iraqi mob. In our second extract, we reveal how time ran out for the besieged Redcaps, the blunders that stopped them from being saved, and how the death toll could easily have been far higher .

AT THE Ops Room in Camp Abu Naji in southern Iraq, the headquarters staff of 1 Para kept a satellite phone on a ledge eight feet above the ground. Only up there could it get any sort of incoming signal. Even so, the corporaI in charge could scarcely hear its ring tone above the hubbub and often worried how many calls he had missed.

By good fortune, he heard it on the morning of June 24, 2003. He grabbed the receiver and recognised the voice of one of the battalion's most experienced NCOs, Sergeant Gordon 'Robbo' Robertson, straining above the sound of incoming fire.

'It's Robbo! We are in a heavy contact. We've killed several enemy already and we're starting to run low on ammunition. We're surrounded. Request immediate QRF [Quick Reaction Force reinforcements]. This is really urgent We're in the sh*te here! Over!'

Earlier that morning, Robbo had led his Bravo section on patrol in the town of Majar al-Kabir just 15 miles away. Another 12-man section— Alpha—was with them. Their orders were to make a show of strength against the heavily armed and increasingly hostile Arab population.

But everything had gone wrong. A mob was waiting for them, stone-throwing turned to gunfire and Iraqi insurgents fell dead in the streets. A full-scale battle erupted. Now both sections were pinned down under hostile fire in separate battles in the centre of the town

The lack of ammunition—supplies had been slashed since the war officially ended two months earlier— was already beginning to tell on the beleaguered men.

This was the doomsday scenario the military in Iraq had always feared— two lightly armed sections outnumbered and trapped in a volatile town.

Those who heard Robbo's tone were stunned by it. He was no flapper; his situation must be dire. Worried glances were exchanged across the Ops Room that said: 'Our guys could die before we reach them.'

A rescue plan swung into action: a Chinook helicopter would fly in a relief team, already waiting on five minute stand-by for the off.

The duty pilot, one of several women serving on the base breezed into the Ops Room for a briefing. ‘Can I have a drop-off grid (an exact point to land)?’ she asked.

'No,' she was told. 'We don't have their precise locations on the ground. There's lots of firing going on. Drop the troops off just short, out of immediate danger.'

Meanwhile, a larger force was preparing to set off in armoured cars But its departure was delayed by up to I5 minutes because the men realised they weren't carrying enough ammunition for such a dangerous mission.

Their supplies, too, had been 'descaled' on orders from above, so the rescuers were forced to stop off at the armoury to break open boxes of ammo that had been packed away for return to the UK.

Tragically for six men at the centre of the mayhem in Majar al-Kabir those wasted minutes may have been enough to make the difference between life and death. And the Ops Room didn't even know they were there.

THE men in question were a detachment of Redcaps—British military policemen.

Amid the frantic activity in the Ops Room, Warrant Officer Matthew 'Bob' Marley, the Redcap representative heard the name Majar al-Kabir being mentioned.

It was the same town that a six-man patrol from his unit had said would be their first stopping off place that day as they went on a routine patrol checking local police stations.

Marley had since had no communication with them, though this was not unusual. The odds were that they had paid their short visit to the town and already moved on.

He reported to the Para officer in charge of the rescue mission that he thought some of his men might be in the area, 'though I can't confirm this because we've not had comms'.

The Ops Officer was in a difficult position: should he factor a possible but unconfirmed military police presence into the rescue mission? He took the information on board but, without further details there was little he could do. He had Alpha and Bravo to concentrate on

In the centre of Majar al-Kabir, Bravo were still pinned down. A rocket-propelled grenade made a direct hit on the fuel tank of one of their Pinzgauer all-terrain vehicles, just as 'Robbo' Robertson was ordering one of his men to run over and start the engine for an attempted break-out.

Their chances of making a run for it were now seriously dented. And when the second Pinzgauer also went up in flames, the Paras knew their chances of survival were ebbing away.

They were too deep into the town to escape on foot so Robbo decided on a new strategy: they would find somewhere to hole up until rescue arrived.

'We're going to fire and manoeuvre, then lay low,' he told his men. 'Watch your distances, keep closed up and make every round count.'

The section moved quickly and watchfully along the streets, one man running forward as his oppo put down defensive fire.

The Iraqis chased them—with evident enthusiasm. Smoke grenades would have screened the men's retreat but these like so much of their supplies, had been withdrawn from service since the end of the war.

Pinned down by half a dozen gunmen, Robbo spotted an Iraqi with a grenade launcher crawling towards him. As the attacker took aim Robbo, ignoring his own safety, stood up from cover and sniped him. Even in the heat of battle, his men were impressed.

The sergeant then picked a ramshackle complex of small buildings to lie low in and sent in Joseph, the troop's local Iraqi interpreter—who had been with them throughout the fighting—to negotiate with the family who lived there.

'Tell them as long as they stay calm they'll be OK.'

It was not that simple. The Iraqis protested and when they were made to lie on the floor for their own safety they assumed they were going to be killed!; They Started Wailing: ‘Allah, Allah!’

Outside, the men of Bravo could see Iraqi gunmen circling, searching for them, and they were pumped up to make a run for it if their cover was blown. For now, though, they crouched exhausted, sweat pouring down their faces, gripped by a sense of isolation and desperation.

Where was the rescue force, they muttered to each other. 'They should have rocked up by now. I mean, what's the drama? Just jump on the heli and go. We're only 20 clicks away.'

Robbo reached for the satellite phone again. In the Ops Room back at camp, they could barely make out his voice, the signal was so weak, but his message was unmistakable.

'We're in a hide. We've got gunmen all around us. We've got f***-all ammo left. We can't hold out for long.'

'We hear that, Robbo. Stay calm mate.'

And help was indeed on its way. At that very moment, the Chinook full of reinforcements was dropping down through heavy fire onto Majar al-Kabir.

'Can you hear that?' said one of Bravo. 'That's definitely the Chinook. At f***ing last!'

The sound of the thudding 'copter blades was also a blessed relief for Alpha section, pinned down nearby. The gunmen attacking them switched their attention towards the sky, and as the helicopter thundered overhead they turned to chase it.

Robbo ran from the house and fired a red flare to let the relief force know Bravo's precise location. It was a risky move—it would also tell the Iraqis where they were and then it would be a race as to who got to them first.
At the controls of the Chinook was Wing Commander Guy van den Berg.

At the last minute he had taken the place of the female pilot because his craft was ready to take off and hers was still undergoing last-minute
checks.

Now, with so many Iraqis surrounding Bravo's position he opted to land as close as possible to the beleaguered men rather than dropping the rescue troops up short as the Ops Room had initially suggested. From
the rooftops, Iraqi rifles, grenade launchers and rockets took aim.

The Chinook turned tightly, dodging a hail of incoming fire, and stuttered towards the ground in a cloud of dust. The Paras inside were already on their feet, ready to leap out.

But with the helicopter still 20 metres above the ground, a heavy burst of fire suddenly shredded through its armourless skin. The Paras dived for the floor as bullets ricocheted around the metal frame. 'Down, get down.' 'Aargh! F***!' The pilot climbed away, rotors screeching and narrowly missed running into electricity power lines. One hundred holes had drilled into the helicopter's belly and fuselage.

There was a brief, eerie silence in the cargo hold before the first groans. 'I think I've been hit.’ ‘My leg!’ ‘Medic ... medic!' Seven out of the 20 men had been hit, and there was blood spattered across the walls.

They could, in theory, have tried landing again, so the uninjured men could go to the aid of Alpha and Bravo. But it was the pilot's call— and he was convinced the Chinook had already taken too much fire.

If they landed, they might not be able to take off and get the wounded men to safety. There was no choice— the helicopter headed back to base.

Later, they would discover a bullet had passed two inches from the Chinook's gearbox. If it had struck it the craft would have crashed, killing all on board.

NOBODY knew it at the time, but the Chinook's failed attempt to land a rescue force possibly spelt the end for the Six Redcaps.

A mob had surrounded the police station where Sergeant Simon Hamilton-Jewell ('H-J') and his five military police colleagues were on their routine visit. The local Iraqi policemen had run away but the Redcaps bravely stood their ground against 200 or so gun-wielding insurgents.

The details of their last moments will always be a mystery. Dead men tell no tales, and the Arabs who cold-bloodedly murdered them have never been called to account, despite the proud promise of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to hunt them down. We know that an elderly man in the crowd tried to save them—and we know that he failed.

Ali al-Ateya, a hospital worker who was called to the station, saw the bodies soon after the massacre. 'One was upright against a wall, others were lying on the floor in different positions,' he told me. 'Each had been shot in the head more than once. The blood was still warm and wet.

'They were dressed in desert uniforms, except for their helmets, which were strewn about the floor.'

At the post-mortem back in Britain a fortnight later, a pathologist counted 27 separate entry and exit wounds on H-J's body and concluded he had been hit by more than a dozen shots from high-velocity weapons, most likely AK47s.

At least that meant a theory he had been killed with a British rifle, possibly his own, could be discounted.

There were also many 'blunt impact injuries'. It seemed those responsible had taken their time to make this a prolonged ritualistic killing, stamping on him with rifle butts and feet either before or after they had shot up his body. Particular attention had been paid to his groin.

It was the same with the other bodies. At least one had been shot near his sexual organs. Whoever killed the six British soldiers had wanted to
humiliate them.

Later, the Army—after examining Corporal Si Miller's rifle, the only one recovered from the scene— insisted the Redcaps had not fired their weapons at any point during the incident and had acted in a passive
and conciliatory manner throughout.

Some Iraqis claimed the opposite, insisting the soldiers had initiated the massacre by shooting at the mob, killing a man whose family demanded revenge.

'The soldiers fired shots and the people fired back. Then they attacked the building,' according to one witness, Salah Mohammed.

But others were adamant the Redcaps had shown total restraint. Salam al-Wahele, another witness, said the men had surrendered and had given their weapons to members of the supposedly friendly Iraqi militia, who had arrived after the mob stormed in.

'I led a sergeant [H-J] to a side room and said he could escape by a window but he said he didn't want to go and leave the other men _~ behind. He left me there and went back to the room where all he other men were shot.'

A doctor, Firas Fasal, recalled seeing H-J just before the shooting started. ‘He was in the doorway and looked like he was trying to protect the others. I was trying to bring peace. Often I think if I had got to them sooner, I might have brought them life.'

Back in Britain, the news of the massacre caused profound shock. In their desire to present the invasion of Iraq as a success, politicians and the military authorities had sought to suggest that our troops were facing minimal hostility or danger.

The slaughter of the Redcaps showed just what a fiction this was. And at the time, it was touch and go whether the Paras would be butchered as well.

AS the men of Alpha and Bravo heard the Chinook move away, fear settled in their stomachs. They were on their own again—except for the enemy, who were closing in once more and in greater numbers.

The flare Robbo had fired to signal to the Chinook had given away Bravo's exact hiding place, and one Iraqi was now trying to break in through the courtyard at the back of the house as others climbed over the crumbling wall at the front.

Gunfire was peppering the buildings, with the Paras picking off every attacker rash enough to offer a target. But for each Iraqi disposed of another took his place.

Robbo called the Ops Room. Yes, the Chinook had had to turn back, he was told. The land force was closing in, but it was still 20 minutes away.

Robbo took the news calmly enough. 'My guys have hardly any ammunition left. We're running out of time. What else can I say?'

Several men were down to their last magazine. Iraqi bodies piled up around the perimeter of the buildings but more kept coming. There was the sound of chanting. 'What are they singing?' a curious Robbo asked.

The interpreter listened. 'Mr Robbo, they are singing that they want to chop your testicles off.'

Meanwhile, back at Para headquarters, attempts were being made to bring in air support. Two American F-15 fighter-bombers were in the area. One radioed in.

'This is Jet Jockey. I have a couple of thousand-pound bombs on board. How can I help you?'

It seemed a godsend. An air strike on the Iraqi positions would silence them in seconds. 'Where do you want them, son?' the pilot asked in his Southern drawl.

The radio operator delivered the bad news. 'Jet Jockey, we do not have the exact locations of our troops on the ground. Therefore I cannot give you permission to deliver ordnance, sir.'

'Well, son,' the pilot reflected, 'we have only got five minutes of fuel to loiter. How about we just fly by very low and fast?'

On the ground, Alpha and Bravo's spirits lifted when the F-15s arced through the sky and thundered over the town. Both had 20mm cannon with rotating barrels capable of delivering 4,000-6,000 rounds per minute. A gentle squeeze of the electronic trigger would have neutralised the enemy threat.

As the jets swooped, the Paras waited for them to finish off Iragi resistance. But the aircraft guns remained silent. To cries of 'That's sh*te!' and 'F*** all use' from the stunned men, the jets soared away.

The enemy remained.

BRAVO would have to make a break for it. Robbo ordered his number two' Corporal John Dolman, to stay behind with some of the men and lay down covering fire while the rest made their dash. Once they had reached safety, they would cover the others' escape.

But with little ammunition, putting down any sort of covering fire was a problem. 'Every round's got to find a target,' Robbo told them.

They stepped out into the street and straight into erratic Iraqi fire—the locals were heavily armed but few could shoot with precision.

Each man zigzagged, stopping to fire, then moving again: a classic training ground manoeuvre. Rounds pinged off metal telegraph posts and buildings.

'Enemy right. Behind that corner.' 'Got him.'

But suffering heavy casualties seemed only to encourage the Iraqis' efforts.

'There's more of 'em!'

'How many rounds you got left?'

'Ten.'

'Where are we?'

'F*** knows.'

From door to wall, from telegraph pole to gutter, they kept going until they tumbled one by one into an irrigation ditch full of polluted water.

As they pressed their bodies against the bank, the damp got into their radios and they cut out—yet another equipment failure, like trucks that wouldn't start and satellite phones that would barely work.

'They're closing.'

Dolman's group had now caught up with Robbo's, and the reunited Bravo section clambered to the top of the irrigation ditch, their boots sticking in the mud. More Iraqis blocked their path .'They're crazy.'

Each time one gunman was hit, another sprinted forwards. Each bullet spent was a bullet lost. The Paras were now down to their last half-magazines and none of them had a bayonet to fix.

Back in the Ops Room—where the fate of the Redcaps was, of course, still unknown—the tension over what was happening to Alpha and Bravo was palpable.

The Paras had not lost a single man during the war. Now, at the very fag end of the peace-support phase, they faced the heaviest British combat loss for many years. Could they get them out alive?

•ABRIDGED extract from LAST ROUND by Mark Nicol, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on May 12 at £16.99. copyright: Mark Nicol, 2005.

[harry hackedoff]

Brave lads all.

We Will Remember Them....

[Cobalt]

Very brave. What you done will never be forgotten.

RIP lads.