when he saw shadowy figures in the billowing clouds of dust created by the tanks. Realizing that they were armed troops advancing between the tanks, he slammed the door shut, bawled a warning to his colleagues, then raced back to his desk to make a hurried telephone call to Kuwait City, informing his superiors of what was happening.
He was still talking when the rapid fire of a Kalashnikov AK47 assault rifle blew the lock off the door, allowing it to be violently kicked open. Iraqi troops rushed in to rake the room with their weapons, massacring all those inside and – more important from their point of view – blowing the telephones to pieces.
As the spearhead of Saddam Hussein’s military machine rumbled along the 50-mile, six-lane highway leading to Kuwait City, troops were dropped off at every intersection to capture Kuwaitis entering or leaving. Other troops disengaged from the main convoy to drag stunned Kuwaiti truck drivers from their vehicles and either shoot them on the spot or, if they were lucky, keep them prisoner at gunpoint.
Simultaneously, Iraqi special forces, airlifted in by helicopter gunships, were parachuting from the early-morning sky to secure road junctions, government buildings, military establishments and other key positions in the sleeping capital.
Moving in on the city, still out of earshot of most of those sleeping, were a million Iraqi troops, equipped with hundreds of artillery pieces, multiple-rocket launchers, and a wide variety of small arms. Stretched out along a 200-mile front, obscured by clouds of dust created by Saddam Hussein’s five and a half thousand battle tanks, they endured because they were motivated by months of starvation and their growing envy of Kuwaiti wealth.
In air-conditioned hotels, marble-walled boudoirs and lushly carpeted official residences, the citizens of Kuwait were awakened by the sound of aircraft and gunfire from the outskirts of the city. Wondering what was happening, they tuned in to Kuwait Radio and heard emergency broadcasts from the Ministry of Defence, imploring the Iraqi aggressors to cease their irresponsible attack or face the consequences. Those who heard the broadcasts, Kuwaitis and foreigners alike, went to their windows and looked out in disbelief as parachutists glided down against a backdrop of distant, silvery explosions and beautiful webbed lines of crimson tracers. It all seemed like a dream.
Thirty minutes later, as the early dawn broke with the light of a blood-red sun, the grounds of the Dasman Palace were being pounded by the rocket fire of the Iraqis’ Russian-built MiG fighters. Even as the Emir of Kuwait was being lifted off by a helicopter bound for Saudia Arabia, his Royal Guard, pitifully outnumbered, were being cut down by Iraqi tanks and stormtroopers. In addition, the Emir’s half-brother, Sheikh Fahd, who had nobly refused to leave, had been fatally wounded on the steps of the palace.
While Hussein’s tanks surrounded the British and American embassies, his jets were rocket-bombing the city’s airport, illuminating the starlit sky with jagged flashes of silver fire, which soon turned into billowing black smoke. Two guards died as Iraqi troops burst into Kuwait’s Central Bank to begin what would become an orgy of looting.
By dawn the Iraqis were in control of key military installations and government buildings in the capital, Kuwait’s pocket army was fighting a losing battle to protect the invaluable Rumaila oilfields and thousands of wealthy Kuwaitis and expatriate Britons, Americans, Europeans and Russians, trying to flee to Saudi Arabia, were being turned back by the Iraqi tanks and troops encircling the city.
Having returned to their homes, the expatriates heard their embassies advise them on the radio to stock up with food and stay indoors. Those brave enough to venture out to replenish their food stocks saw Iraqi generals riding around in confiscated Mercedes while their troops, long envious of Kuwaiti prosperity, machine-gunned the windows of the stores in Fahd Salem Street, joining the growing numbers of looters. Soon reports of rape were spreading throughout the city.
Before sunset, the invaders had dissolved Kuwait’s National Assembly, shut ports and airports, imposed an indefinite curfew and denounced the absent Emir and his followers as traitorous agents of the Jews and unspecified foreign powers.
No mention was made of the Iraqi tanks burning in the grounds of the fiercely defended Dasman Palace, the sporadic gunfire still heard throughout the city as loyal Kuwaitis sniped at the invaders or the many dead littering the streets.
Even as the sun was sinking, torture chambers were being set up all over the city and summary executions, by shotgun or hanging, were becoming commonplace.
By midnight, Kuwait as the world knew it had ceased to exist; the armoured brigades of the Middle East’s most feared tyrant stood at the doors of Saudi Arabia; and thousands of foreigners, including Britons, were locked in hotels or in their homes, cowering under relentless shellfire or hiding in basements, attics, cupboards and water tanks as Iraqi troops, deliberately deprived of too much for too long, embarked on an orgy of looting, torture, rape, murder and mindless destruction.
On 1 January 1991, almost four months to the day after Saddam Hussein’s bloody take-over of Kuwait City, an RAF C-130 Hercules transport plane secretly took off from RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire. It was transporting members of the SAS (Special Air Service) and the SBS (Special Boat Squadron) to a holding area in Riyadh – the joint capital, with Jeddah, of Saudi Arabia – located in the middle of the country and surrounded by desert.
Though the SAS men were pleased to be back in business, the fact that they had been called back to their Hereford base on Boxing Day, when most of them were at home celebrating with family or friends, had caused some of them to voice a few complaints. Now, as they sat in cramped conditions, packed in like sardines with their weapons, bergens, or backpacks, and other equipment in the gloomy, noisy hold of the Hercules, some of them were passing the time by airing the same gripes.
‘My missus was fucking mad,’ Corporal Roy ‘Geordie’ Butler told his friends, in a manner that implied he agreed with her. ‘No question about it. Her whole family was there, all wearing their best clothes, and she was just putting the roast in the oven when the telephone rang. When I told her I’d been called back to Hereford and had to leave right away, she came out with a mouthful of abuse that made her family turn white. They’re all Christian, her side.’
‘Don’t sound so hard done by, Geordie,’ said Corporal ‘Taff’ Burgess. ‘We can do without that bullshit. We all know your heart was broken a few years back when your missus, after leaving you for a month, returned home to make your life misery. You were having a great time without her in the pubs in Newcastle.’
That got a laugh from the others. ‘Hear, hear!’ added Jock McGregor. ‘Geordie probably arranged the phone calls to get away from his missus and her family. Come on, Geordie, admit it.’
‘Go screw yourself, Sarge’. She’s not bad, my missus. Just because she made a mistake in the past, doesn’t mean she’s no good. Forgive and forget, I say. I just think they could have picked another day. Boxing Day, for Christ’s sake!’
But in truth, he’d been relieved. Geordie was a tough nut and he couldn’t stand being at home. He didn’t mind his wife – who had, after all, only left him for a month to go and moan about him to her mother in Gateshead – but he couldn’t stand domesticity, the daily routine in Newcastle – doing the garden, pottering about the house, watching telly, walking the dog, slipping out for the odd pint – it was so bloody boring. No, he needed to be with the Regiment, even if it meant being stuck in Hereford, doing nothing but endless retraining and field exercises. And now, with some real work to do, he felt a lot happier.
‘What about you, Danny?’ Geordie asked
