Dirty Deeds Done Cheap by Peter Mercer Page A

circumstances. We all knew we just needed to get out of there, and fast, before things got any worse.
    We flew through Tal Afar and we were soon on the outskirts of the city. As we were driving so fast, we unfortunately hit a mother dog; she was killed instantly but the puppy with her wasn’t. Because of the lower risk in the area we were now in, and because we were a bunch of soft bastards, we stopped and picked up the puppy and put her in the back of the truck. We decided to keep her, and we named her Kasper (after a good friend of mine). In the war zone it is definitely true that soldiers or mercenaries can be some of the softest bastards you will ever meet when it comes to animals and not humans. So now we had ourselves a pet.
    I’m not going to lie to you and say Iraq, especially Fallujah, Mosul and Tal Afar, are out-and-out firefights every day, but it could be vicious and our personnel casualty rate was 47 per cent overall. Obviously, this was nearly half of our guys. We were losing an average of one or two guys a month through death or serious injury. This was far from our lack of professionalism; rather it was down to our being in the worst hotspot in Iraq. It made me think sometimes that I should have got a job in Tesco! All joking aside, the soldiering side of you loves it, but the family-man side (and your conscience) can sometimes deplore it.
    As we ploughed through and out of Tal Afar we could see the American forces walking behind their armoured vehicles while on patrol, especially on the outskirts of town. You couldn’t blame them (if we had armour-plated vehicles we would definitely have done the same). We just fired straight past them at breakneck speed with a quick wave as a good-luck gesture. This was bandit country after all. They all thought we were crazy fuckers for having no doors on and hardly any armour. I was beginning to think that they were right.
    As we got through this broken, tattered city it was obvious these people were in a mess. Something was wrong. The hearts-and-minds strategies weren’t working. When the US military accused the British forces in Basra of losing the battle for hearts and minds, I personally was a little bit disgusted. The British are very good at hearts and minds – as good as the Americans, I believe. Hearts and minds can win wars. I apologise to any Americans reading this, but don’t take it personally. It’s just my personal view – take it or leave it.
    Tal Afar is a crazy place – an insurgent stronghold. I wouldn’t call it fun because this was still going to be a tough escape – basically trying to get out of this place in one piece. It was going to be a major escape. The American forces at the time were having a pretty hard time trying to keep control of the place. For everyone who works in Iraq who is of white or European origin, their worst fear is capture. If you were unlucky enough to get caught the consequences are unimaginable: days, weeks or possibly even months of torture. And I’ve already spelled out the likely consequences of that: certain beheading, after which I’ve personally had to pick up the pieces. I’ve read quite a bit of the Koran and know that the people who do these atrocities are hypocrites. They don’t believe in good or bad: they believe in their way or no way. I’ve some very good Muslim friends and they feel the same as me about this.
    Once we’d hit the outskirts of Tal Afar with our new pet tied on the back of one of the trucks, we started to relax a bit, when, to our slight shock and surprise, we encountered a big burst of automatic gunfire. This place never let up! We couldn’t pinpoint where it came from, just that it was from our right. A stray round then winged one of the Gurkha gunners, who was on the back of one of the trucks. We just ploughed on, though – we had to. To stop would have been suicide.
    I’ve worked for unprofessional companies with idiots working for them out in Iraq. They would probably have