WEEKEND WARRIOR: Hero reveals horror of war
By Kevin Mervin
TODAY for the first time in terrifying, gripping and often heart-rending detail, one of Britain's brave part-time soldiers reveals the chilling TRUTH about the war in Iraq.
IN the shattering diary he kept faithfully throughout his Gulf service lorry driver and Territorial Army corporal Kevin Mervin lays bare the brutal and bitter realities of day-to-day life for our lads—and lasses—on the desert front line.
THROUGH his own down-to-earth words Cpl Mervin reveals how he saw children callously machine-gunned in the street by evil Saddam's rebel forces and found families torn to pieces by bullets from their own countrymen. He tells of spine-tingling firefights and a hair-raising ambush.
HIS war diary also reveals his revulsion at the arrogance of captured Iraqi thugs, his disgust at their five-star treatment—and the joy he shared with the ordinary people he liberated. Kevin's story will open the eyes of anti-war demonstrators around the world. Start reading it today.
THE Iraqi border. Near dawn. March 20, 2003.
Sheltering in his truck from a violent sandstorm in the midst of the biggest Allied army to gather since D-Day, part-time soldier Kevin Mervin picks up his pen.
The war against Saddam Hussein's brutal regime is about to begin. And so is a diary that will change Territorial Army corporal Kevin's life forever. As screaming shells and violent explosions light up the night air outside, Kevin—a lorry driver in civilian life who had no idea what he was in for—writes: "No turning back. This is it.
"My heart is pounding like a racehorse after running the Grand National and my stomach is tying itself in knots, for the war has started.
"A huge sandstorm has hit our location. The Iraqi army have taken advantage of this and launched an attack on our position, using a large number of T72 tanks to bombard us. Twelve Challenger 2 MBTs thunder past, heading for the T72s' position to take ‘em out.
"I can't believe what I'm witnessing. Is this for real? Are we really going to war. Am I going to die?
"A few weeks ago I was a lorry driver whose only worries were where I should stop for a pee on the M6. Now I'll be driving across a border and into a war and for what? Freedom, f*****g freedom?
"This better be worth it. They better appreciate it, the Iraqis, and the people back home, moaning about the war. Do they actually realise what we're going through? Have they been told? Nah, they won't listen anyway, they couldn't give a s**t."
Like every British soldier on the Kuwaiti border that night, army mechanic Kevin knew of the huge anti-war demonstrations back home. How millions were against it. How it was "unjust".
The 38-year-old dad-of-three had been a Terrier eight years. He loved the weekend warrior life in Northamptonshire—but he never expected to fight.
Now here he was about to duck bullets in a foreign land—sent by a country divided over whether he should even be there. He was worried and fed up.
But four days later, everything was to change in a bloody encounter Kevin would never forget.
March 24: Kevin and fellow soldier Stuart, both in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers V, are in a patrol ordered into the town of Az Zubayrth to recover a broken-down army lorry. Kevin's diary records the full horror of what unfolded.
Rifle
"As we drove in I noticed a bunch of kids, five or six years old, running down the wasteland beside a wall. They were screaming and shouting. Then there was a burst of automatic fire—the children were running for their lives.
"I slowed down and flashed the warrior armoured vehicle accompanying our patrol in front—but they hadn't heard the shots and turned a corner out of sight.
"A man in civvy clothing came into view. He crouched down and took careful aim with his AK rifle, continuing to fire small bursts at the scattering children.
"No, no, no! This wasn't happening. I grabbed my rifle, jumped out of the cab of my Mercedes truck and got cover behind the front bumper. I lay down in the prone position and snapped a couple of rounds in his direction.
"The crack of my rounds whizzing past his head made him look at me, but he was soon distracted by the fleeing children, as if he was weighing up the situation —kill the kids first, then me.
"Stuart jumped out of his Foden (recovery vehicle) and went under the bumper ready to fire.
"The kids were well scattered and about 100 metres ahead of the chogie (army slang for hostile militia-men). He opted to fire at the children first and took aim again, letting off three rounds. Instantly a little girl fell to the ground like a rag doll. I couldn't believe my eyes. ‘You b*****d! You f*****g b*****d!' I shouted. He turned to face me now, pointing his rifle at me—but I didn't give him the chance to return fire.
"I was determined to drop him before he had the chance to drop me. I took aim and double-tapped a dozen rounds in quick succession in the hope he'd fall the same way the little girl had. Then Stuart let off a few rounds from his position, as did the warrior with its chain (machine) gun.
"The crew must've heard the commotion and come back. Chunks of masonry went in all directions as 5.56mm and 7.62mm rounds ripped through the target. The enemy fell, or rather squelched, to the ground—not entirely in one piece.
"The commander of the warrior poked his head out of the turret and beckoned me to get the f*** out of there. I wanted to see if the little girl was alive but there was no chance of that. I jumped back into the truck and wheel-spun the rear axle in my hurry to get away. Stuart did the same in the Foden. Eventually the warrior pulled over and let us pass. I stopped to allow Stuart to catch up then lit a cigarette hoping it would help. It didn't. I couldn't get that little girl out of my head.
Crying
"I started to scream in anger and frustration. ‘B*****d! B*****d! B*****d!' I shouted, punching the steering wheel. Then I jumped out of the cab and kicked the f*** out of the bumper as well. Stuart caught up. He jumped out of the Foden and joined me in kicking the bumper. His eyes were red raw. He too had been crying.
"Before this the only fighting I'd witnessed was a brawl in a pub. The only dead person I'd seen was my grandad. Boy, was all that changing fast." Within days they were capturing Saddam loyalists—and, with the attack on the children still burning in his memory, Kevin pulls no punches in his diary.
"Whatever the militia's excuse, it wouldn't bring back that little girl's life. To capture the Fedayeen (militia-men) alive was an immoral act as far as we were concerned, because we were obliged to treat them with respect: give them medical treatment, food, water and shelter. The food was far better than our ration packs.
"And what did we get in return from those b******s? Nothing but constant complaints and threats of lawsuits because they claimed they were being mistreated.
"I listened to these parasites while building a prisoner-of-war camp, complaints from the same b******s who would force children, some three years old, to drink petrol and then shoot them with a tracer round.
"The burning phosphorous round would ignite the petrol and make it explode inside their stomachs. The parents were forced to witness this. I kept thinking of my own three kids back at home. Of how I would feel.
"It was incredible to think that someone who killed innocent children one day, and was captured the next, could have their complaints backed up by goody two-shoes tree-huggers back home who hadn't even been to Iraq."
Despite anti-war feeling in Britain, Kevin and his comrades were seeing daily the joy of ordinary Iraqis at the fall of Saddam Hussein. Entering the town of Safwan they were greeted as heroic liberators by ecstatic crowds:
"It seemed the whole of the town's population had lined the streets. It gave me a tremendous buzz. I saw a little girl, no older than four, in a pink dress with a dirty face looking at me. I noticed where tears had made clean streaks down her cheeks.
"I quickly rummaged through the 24-hour rat (rations) pack next to me and pulled out a bar of chocolate. I threw it at her in a feeble attempt to ease my guilty conscience. Some young boys knocked her over to get the bar. She sat on the kerb, leaving them to fight over the chocolate. My heart went out to her. I jumped off the truck with a complete rat pack and handed it to her.
"She wouldn't take it at first so I took out a bar and opened it for her. Her eyes lit up. After a few mouthfuls, she looked up at me and smiled. This precious child must have thought everything was OK now. No more fear and no more pain and suffering.
Ambushes
"I wished I had a magic wand to make everything all right but chocolate was all I could give to try and make things better."
But behind the satisfaction of liberating the Iraqis lay the constant threat of ambushes.
Standing sentry duty one day, Kevin, his pal Stuart, also a TA corporal, and fellow regular army comrades Bobby and Tony were caught in a firefight as a group of Iraqi militants in a red pick-up attacked their position. Kevin wrote: "The truck slowly edged towards our position at the camp's north entrance.
"Then, as Stuart was walking to the Foden, the engine revs increased. ‘Stuart,' I shouted. ‘Take cover—this could turn nasty.' I ran to take charge of the gimpie (general purpose machine gun). Tony had crouched down to my left with his rifle over the top of the sandbags and the LAW (light anti-tank weapon) in easy reach.
"Then, when it was 20 metres away, automatic fire from the back of the pick-up filled the air.
"I returned fire with a few bursts from the gimpie with Tony, Stuart and Bobby joining in the exchange. The gimpie chopped out the front of the pick-up, stopping it instantly.
"The windscreen and offside panels were peppered with holes from the 7.62mm rounds of the gimpie and the 5.56mm rounds of the LSWs (light support weapons) and SA80 rifles. The two chogies in the cab slumped in their seats. Four chogies in the back dived out and took cover in the bushes. Seconds later they emerged, throwing their hands in the air, shouting what could have been obscenities or requests for mercy." It was over.
After moving north to Al Amarah in mid-April, Kevin and his comrades once again found evidence of the full brutal horror of Saddam's regime.
They were led to the back of a roadside breeze-block building by a weeping little boy and found the bodies of two adults and a child in a shallow grave. Nearby a man stood crying. The boy ran to him. Kevin wrote:
"The bloke picked up the boy and hugged him. Stuart and I looked on, slightly confused. ‘I'm his father,' he said.
"‘If you're his father, who are the bodies?' Stuart asked. The man replied, ‘The woman is my wife, the girl is my daughter. The man is my wife's father.' Then he explained what had happened.
"The militia had wanted the shack as a gun position to take out coalition vehicles. The owner, the boy's grandfather, refused them entry—a big mistake.
Shot
"The militia shot the boy's sister to try to make the grandfather change his mind but it made him even more stubborn. He was determined not to let them have it.
"So they forced him to dig the shallow pit and put the little girl in. But its size must have raised his suspicions—they wanted it big enough to hold two adults.
"Sure enough, the grandad and the little girl's mother were forced to kneel in front of the pit, then shot in the back of the head, falling into their own graves."
Unofficially, Kevin and his mates are told the Iraqi army has surrendered on April 16. Kevin flew back to England on April 26.
"As we stepped off the plane we were greeted by a cold early morning mist. Taxis had been arranged to take us home.
"By 0800 I was ringing the front doorbell. When my wife Helen answered, I didn't know who was most surprised. After the welcome tears and hugs, I lay down on the sofa with my four-year-old daughter Rachel."
Kevin's mind flashed back to another little girl, lying like a rag doll in the road. And to a crying little boy standing over the shallow grave of his murdered mum.
"Then Rachel looked at me with her innocent blue eyes and asked, ‘You're not leaving again, are you, Daddy?'
"I looked at her and smiled. Back here was where I belonged. ‘C'mon darling, let's watch Bear In The Big Blue House. I think it's just started', I said."
