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THE FINAL FANTASY!

War Diary

When fear gave way to jubilation and looting, followed by freedom, then fear again and smiling. By our man with our boys Jeremy Woodstock.

9th April 2003

Pressed against on all sides by excited teenagers, I stood in central Baghdad and felt something extraordinary unfurling deep within me. Emotions surged in the clamorous, musky crush. I seemed to hear the mysterious oriental pipe music of history's snake charmer, arousing the mesmerised snake of my presence with its diamond-sparkling 'mind's eye'.

The air seemed blurred with freedom's mist. Then I realised that I was crying. Hot tears of relief and joy streamed down my face in twin rivulets, like the Tigris and the Euphrates. Between them, the Mesopotamia of my lips, my mouth, my throat - roughened, coarsened by my urging shouts. 

I've been covering Iraq for four weeks, and even after the war started I never imagined what it would be like the moment I came across American soldiers in Baghdad. Their easy manner, good looks and well-fitting outfits impressed everyone. There were no hugs - that, perhaps will come later - but there were flowers, tears, occasional small arms fire and rioting, and singing.

"Halal al halal ha ha halalal" they seemed to be chanting - "O Saddam, we no longer redeem you with our blood but fling at you our shoes, yes you bastard!"

Then the big push began. As the strong, wary Marines penetrated Baghdad's ring and then entered its central gyratory system, the roaring sound of tank engines resounded through the city streets. But these tank engines did not belong to the twisted 'Fat Controller' of Baathist repression - they belonged to the 'Sir Topham Hat' of Free Speech. The torturers and killers of Old Iraq now lay - like silly old Gordon - in a ditch, their smashed bodies, the splintered bone and exposed guts a focus only for the flies swarming in freedom over them. 

I recoiled from this thought as I stood there in the predominantly male crowd and shared with them an almost animal sense of unleashed fury and hatred. Some years ago a friend took me to a football match, and I remember similar scenes of volatile, though positive, energy. 

"Yes!" they seemed to be saying. "Come on!"

Later, I came across a 14 year-old boy, wearing a traditional loose robe.

********

30th March 2003

Sunday. A grey column of smoke hangs over Basra like an inverted teardrop, or a cloudy effusion in the bath. It is a grim reminder of the reality of war. All night, all day, heavy artillery has pounded the ramshackle compound of buildings, where I imagine the fabric-swathed minions of a bloody dictator cursing in phlegm-choked consonants their twitching endgame of boiling blood and sinew.


Each seismic wave of destruction sends a tremor through my body, shuddering up from the ground, coursing through calf, through thigh, to the very core of what it means to be a man - here, now, in this arena of death.



Monday. After a couple of hours of rough sleeping, I am woken by my minder - Sgt David "Max" Pinner, 32, a Para fitness instructor from Merseyside. We're moving out in 30 minutes. "Stick close", he says, gruffly. "I don't want you no more than five metres away from me. Things could get hairy. Remember - I'm the one with the big gun". Adding, with the blunt humour of all well-built Scousers, "you soft bitch". Just enough time to brew up a "wet", and pack. Three pairs of socks, one change of clothing, laptop, satellite phone, body massager and phrasebook.


Outside, in the unforgiving amber vastness, it is already 100 degrees. Inside the personnel carrier, we are crammed together in the suffocating musk of war. It is the smell of fear, and adrenaline. The smell of oil. The smell of men. As we near a village, I see the obscenely twisted bodies of dead Iraqis, and the tear-stained face of a desperate tot.



Tuesday. At the front, men stick together. Already, the "Hung Ones" - as the lads of 7 Para Royal Horse Artillery are known - seem like brothers to me. Or rather, very close friends with few inhibitions. The crump of incoming mortar is muffled, like the sound of something going off inside you.



Wednesday. The first locals appear on the streets. Nervous at first, then curious. A teenage boy runs his trembling, fascinated fingers over my smooth, hairless, camouflage-creamed face. I choke back tears.


The children scramble for sweets, and pet our sniffer dog - "Raghead". He loves the attention. Max jokingly tells me the boys have decided Raghead and I are to be joint regimental mascots: "one of each". Young men from the village - their watchful, hooded eyes staring out from gaunt, stubbled, inscrutable faces, their bodies dark mysteries beneath their flowing djellabas - are patted down and tied up, though I can only stand and watch, a lump in my throat.


Houses are searched for any weapon of mass destruction. None is found, though in one house there are traces of a biological washing powder, which could indicate the enemy's ruthlessness in using civilians as human shields. As we leave the village, a stark sign that resentment still lurks, like a series of poisoned wells, in the hearts and minds of some of the people. Scrawled in marker pen on one of the dilapidated front doors, the chilling message: "Raghead Cunt".


Even our dog is not immune from the ire of Saddam loyalists.



Thursday. A Para knows there are two essentials in life here at the throbbing heart of the war machine - his SA80 assault rifle and his talcum powder. Not being able to shower for a fortnight concentrates the mind on the "sweaty bits", and we are all grateful for any relief we can get!


As I lay exhausted in the communal tent, there is a further assault. Rangy young men stripped to the waist - a glistening sheen of sweat across shoulders, arms, tattooes, nipples - pump load after load into the greedy chamber. Once again, this is the grim reality of war.



Friday. After two separate suicide bomb checkpoint incidents, the men are jumpy. I am told to stay in the tent while they sweep the village for signs of resistance. As dusk falls over the sandy wastes of this benighted land of Arabia, the men return. Their stories are horrific, almost unbelieveable, and too gruesome to repeat.


Not for the first time, I reach for words to describe this human tragedy. 



Saturday. Orders have come through, and once again my column is on the move, a taut dagger pointed at the dark hole of Saddam's Baghdad. Poignantly, the men keep up their stiff resolve with song - the theme from the Pulse advert - as we pass a sea of twisted bodies lying in perverted repose, like spent lovers.


Here, in this tortured land of wind and sun and sand, there is rest only for the dead. I close my eyes and can see only an infinite golden space, waiting to be filled. But with what, I ask myself. With what?