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.From where I lay I could see what looked like the remains of an ancient viaduct, jutting out from the bank of the river into the water.I wondered how old it was, and whether it could date back as far as the Romans.Round the base of the arches the water was obviously deep, because through my binoculars I could see the current swirling fast.The river was brown with silt, a strong contrast with the salty-looking land on the far bank.What kept my spirits up was the thought that I must be close to the Syrian border – no more than thirty or forty kilometres away.Looking at the map again and again, I worked out that I was much farther west than I had thought I was.I reckoned I was within one night’s march, possibly two, of safety.Until then, the longest I’d ever gone without food was four days, on combat survival training in Wales.Even then, an agent had brought me one slice of bread or a little piece of cheese every twenty-four hours – but I remembered feeling pretty weak at the end.The furthest I’d ever walked in one march was sixty-five kilometres – the final march on Selection.Now, I reckoned, I’d covered about 150 kilometres in three nights, and already it was five days since I’d had a proper meal – the big blow-out at Al Jouf.With my biscuits finished, I began to worry about how long my strength would hold out.How long could I go on walking? Would I slow right down, or even be unable to keep going at all?I knew from weight-training, and books about the subject, that when the body is under stress it starts to burn its own muscle, trying to preserve fat for emergencies.I was carrying very little fat anyway, so I knew my muscles would waste away quite quickly, especially as I was burning yet more energy by shivering all the time.In lectures on combat survival, we’d been told that a man lost in the desert can only survive for a day without water – but this wasn’t a typical desert, because the temperature was so low.I kept wondering about the rest of the patrol.I greatly feared that Vince was dead, and in a way I felt responsible.Lying all day by the tank berm had definitely contributed to his collapse, and it was me who had said we should follow SOPs and stay there.Then, in the night, I should have tied him to me.As a qualified mountain guide, I could have handled the situation better.But at the time I’d been going down with exposure myself, and not thinking as clearly as I might have.What about Stan? It seemed certain that he’d been captured, and I could only hope he wasn’t having too bad a time.As for the other five.I reckoned that a chopper must have come back and lifted them out.I felt sure that the aircraft must have been inbound towards our original position, following the normal Lost Comms procedure, and that it would have flown around until the guys made contact with the pilot.In fact, as I found out later, the other guys in the patrol had been captured that day close to the river at a point about a hundred kilometres nearer to the Syrian border.As a result of contacts with them, 1,600 Iraqi troops had been deployed to look for other Coalition soldiers on the run, and the civilian population along the river had been alerted.Sunday 27 January: Escape – Night FourI came out of my hiding place not long after dark, and began heading north-west, keeping as close as I could to the edge of the cultivated land, where the going was easiest.I was walking more carefully now, because I was in a populated area.I was probably down to three or four kilometres an hour.Occasionally, for a change, I rested the 203 over my shoulder, but for most of the time I held it in both hands, with the weight taken by the sling of paracord round my neck.That way, the weapon was less tiring on my arms, but it was also at the ready: I could have aimed and fired a shot within a second.Soon I found that there were amazing numbers of Arabs out and about.Every half hour or so I’d come across a group standing or sitting around, chatting in quiet voices.Several times I picked up the glow of a cigarette and had to box round it.(Boxing is when you walk in a box shape round an obstacle, counting your paces and turning right-angles so you end up walking in the same direction as before.) Often I just smelled smoke, either from cigarettes or from a fire or stove, and pulled off without seeing anything.It seemed odd that so many citizens should be out of doors on a freezing winter night.Again and again I saw or sensed people ahead of me, brought up the night-sight for a better look, and had to make a detour
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