An Iraqi Soldier.

An Iraqi Soldier

The war had been going on for about seven days. Tonight was the coldest of all. There were about fifteen of us, all-hiding in the deserted primary school. We were just sitting there waiting for the bombardment to stop. We knew that we couldn’t sleep for the American's could find us as soon as the barrage of bombs halted. Most of the time, we were kept awake all night and during the day: the bombs ceased around dawn and we feared that it would be followed by a ground assault from the Americans. The American devils had not yet reached us. Rumour had it that they were about three miles away. Visibility around here was almost zero, you could barely see your hand in front of you, let alone the enemy, this was due to the fact that a couple of days ago we ignited a number of oil fields, in the hope that the bombing would stop. It worked fairly well because it made the targets harder to see, meaning the bombs strayed off target. However, this didn’t last too long because the fighter planes started flying lower, so that the targets became visible. This was when we came out of hiding and started shooting at the planes.

Over our radios came the call from the look out, “The infidels are coming, get into battle positions.” I ran to my position on the roof of the school, manning my gun. Then it came, the silence. No gunfire, no bombs. We were desperately trying to spot the soldiers, who were wearing camouflage. Out of nowhere, the Americans just started shooting. We couldn’t see them, and we weren’t sure that they could see us. After around five minutes of continuous fire, it all died down again. It was my job, as a sniper to spot the enemy and let the rest of my unit know where the soldiers were hiding. I put on my night vision goggles in the hope that it would enable me to see more easily. I was scouring the area, when I caught a glimpse of something, I took a shot at it, but nothing happened. A minute later, all hell broke loose. I could see that I had hit one of the American scum in the shoulder. He was quite badly injured and the medics tried to take him away. I couldn’t let my kill get away, so I took another shot, this time at one of the medical staff. Meanwhile the rest of my troops needed my help. Therefore, I took the initiative and threw one of my few remaining grenades in the direction of the shooting, in the hope that it would kill some Americans.

“Great shot!”

“You really got them there!”

“Those savage beasts aren’t going to be coming back in a hurry!” These were the calls of encouragement I could hear from my companions on the ground. It was all calm, the infidels had gone, and night was coming. We knew that we were going to be under heavy onslaught from bombs and missiles. As a result of this, we gathered up the American’s weaponry, whilst trampling on their bodies with the soles of our shoes and went back to the basement of the school.

That night was terrifying, even though we ...

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“Great shot!”

“You really got them there!”

That night was terrifying, even though we knew that Allah was protecting us, we were still petrified. At one o’clock in the morning, it was my turn to go on ‘look out’ duty. The bombing was still intense, despite that it had been going for nearly three hours. I was posted at the front gate of the school, and I had to patrol around the outside of it, alone for two hours and then the next soldier would come and relieve me. After an hour, I saw somebody walking towards me, I could see them holding their gun. I drew mine quickly and shouted, “Halt, who goes there, friend or foe?” I heard a feint cry of, “Don’t shoot, it’s me, Borac.”

“What are you doing out here already, you’re an hour early?” I asked. Borac replied with, “I needed to get some air, because it’s getting a bit tense in the basement. Everybody’s getting worried that the rest of the Muslim countries aren’t going to join us in our fight against America, like Saddam said they would.” I reassured him that they would, although I wasn’t too sure about it myself, and carried on patrolling.

The next morning we were ready to put up more resistance against the American’s, we would do anything to ensure that they didn’t get into Saddam's palaces. Although we weren’t sure exactly where Saddam and his sons were, we had been told to stop all soldiers entering the palaces for as long as possible. We were determined not to let Saddam down and we especially did not want to lose to the American’s. After three hours of non-stop fighting, some of my men started questioning whether they should be doing this or if they should just give up and surrender. I reminded them that if they gave themselves up, they would probably get shot by their own side or the Americans would kill them anyway, “Even if you do make it to the Americans, you are going to be tortured until you tell them where Saddam is hiding.”

“But we don’t know were he is” replied one of the soldiers.

“It doesn’t matter, the Americans will think that you are lying to protect him, and then they will kill you!” The soldiers were still willing to take that risk because if they did surrender, there was hope that the Americans would give them food and water, for we had not had anything to eat or drink for the past couple of days. We carried on fighting, but as we fought, I could see that the soldiers began doubting themselves even more. You could see that they were tiring and just wanted to stop. Nevertheless, I kept on giving them shouts of encouragement. Looking at the Americans, it seemed almost as if they were enjoying demoralising my troops. Soon, it would start getting dark, then the fighting would probably stop and the bombs would start dropping, I could tell that my men could not last another night without sleep. So, after another hour of fighting we gave ourselves up to the Americans. They took all of our weapons and searched the school. We all told the soldiers that we had no idea where Saddam was hiding. Taking into account that we had surrendered and they could see that we needed food the Americans fed us and gave us bottles of water to drink. After everything that we had gone through for Saddam, it turned out that he had been lying to us all along. He told us that the Americans were like the Devil, they would kill us as soon as they had the chance. However, we now know that they are quite the opposite.

By Andrew Read