The Circuit by Bob Shepherd Page B

hub. Martin and I had spent another night sleeping on the ground next to our 4x4 in the vehicle holding area; which happened to be twenty yards from the communal toilets (upwind of course). Makeshift military toilets don’t offer a great deal of privacy. They’re basically a trench divided by screens tall enough to shield the lower half of the body. Not once in my entire twenty-three-year military career had I ever experienced a problem with this set-up. As far as I was concerned, any kind of toilet is a luxury in a war zone. A half-screened trench is better than a plastic bag (which was often my only option during Regiment operations).
    Martin and I had just sat down to breakfast when a Territorial Army major started having a go at us. Apparently, a female soldier – also TA – had complained to him that we’d been staring at her while she went to the toilet that morning. The major told us we’d have to move from the car park and sleep in a tent with the rest of the media.
    I was outraged and not just because Martin and I had been accused of being peeping Toms. We were sleeping in the car park because we felt it was vital to ensuring the success of our mission.
    ‘I thought we were in the middle of a war,’ I said to the major. ‘If that lassie feels uncomfortable, why don’t you put the men’s toilets at one end of camp and the women’s at the other, instead of picking on us?’
    ‘We’re all in the army together,’ said the major, as if reading from an officer’s manual. He then reminded me that we were lucky to be staying at the hub in the first place.
    I was about to take his head from his shoulders when Martin grabbed my arm. I knew I’d better not say anything else or we wouldn’t have a place to stay and army rations to eat. The entire episode, however, reinforced a belief that I’d held throughout my military career and still hold today: the TA infantry doesn’t belong in war zones. Individually, most TA soldiers are well-meaning people. For some, the TA is a stepping stone to the regular army. And there are parts of the TA that work well in conflict areas, such as doctors and medics back at the rear, away from the front line. But in my view, a part-time soldier has part-time skills; a war situation requires full-time soldiers with full-time, up-to-date skills. You can’t be a supermarket under manager one day and a front-line infanteer the next. I could never understand how over the past three decades, the government could disband or amalgamate great regular British Regiments while keeping TA units intact. It may have saved money and won some generals who dropped their pants for the politicians a few medals, but it ultimately weakened our armed forces.
    Before leaving the hub for the incident area, Martin and I finalized our plan of action. The day before had given us a clearer picture of what had taken place on 22 March. We now wanted to get a good look at where the US mortar and tank positions had been, but our priority was to gather intelligence that could lead us to Fred and Hussein. It was imperative we widen our investigation to the bridge leading to Basra and possibly beyond. We had to determine whether it was feasible to probe into the outskirts of the city and make contact with locals. It was entirely possible that someone inside Basra had information about the missing men.
    Our first stop was where Daniel recalled seeing the US mortar unit. We pulled off the main highway, drove forty metres east and got out of our vehicle. The ground was littered with empty mortar bomb boxes. We concluded that the unit must have been protecting US tanks probing towards the main bridge into Basra.
    Next, we headed to where the US tanks would have been located. A west-bearing road branched off the main highway approximately fifty yards south of where the burnt and bullet-ridden remains of Terry’s vehicle lay. We drove one hundred yards down the road and got out. Tank tracks were etched into the sand