War, they say, is 95% boredom and 5% terror, and for the men of the Black Watch, even the latter is beginning to feel routine.
Nearly three weeks since the regiment arrived at Camp Dogwood, and with the exception of a brief but welcome respite over the Muslim holiday of Eid, rockets and mortars have fallen inside their bleak and uncomfortable base almost every day.
But the distant crump, followed by a high-pitched whistle, and the shouts of “Get down” drowned out by the boom of the explosion, still manage to raise the level of adrenaline in even the most experienced soldiers.
Two arrived before breakfast on Friday, with three more whistling in at about elevenses. The second salvo came just as a squad of Royal Engineers was starting an exercise on a rubble-strewn patch of desert that doubles as a parade ground.
At the first explosion, all nine men — and a small group of unsuspecting journalists — threw themselves to the ground. The second was accompanied by the confusing commands to “get down” and “run like shit” and, by the time the third rocket arrived, much of the assembled company was trying to cram into the front shovel of a digger.
No one was injured in the attacks, the third-largest bombardment by insurgents since the Scottish regiment began its controversial deployment at its remote desert base west of Baghdad.
The regiment’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel James Cowan, calls them a “nuisance”, but Corporal Paul Brown (34), from Gosport, might disagree. Last week, he became one of only two soldiers to be injured in the attacks within the camp, and a small piece of shrapnel that missed his jugular by little more than a centimetre is still embedded in his neck.
“They told me it will probably work its way out at some point,” he said.
But while it is hard to imagine anywhere more uncomfortable or unforgiving, for most of the 850-strong battle group the war being fought around Camp Dogwood is dusty and dirty, but it is not hell.
Instead, it is an exercise in what the engineers, sat against the walls of their quarters on Friday morning waiting for the all-clear, call discomfort management. They have christened the crumbling brick building they call home Taiconderoga Cottage, after the United States name for the base, and have adorned the sign with flowers.
The walls are covered with pictures of women in various stages of undress, while another sign reads: “Mushroom Troop — kept in the dark, fed on shite.” The engineers have even used old cardboard boxes from their ration packs to make Venetian blinds to cover the holes in the walls where there were once windows.
As they lolled around, a whistle sounded from the far end of the corridor. Briefly, the men tensed, before Sergeant Dave Parsley, the troop leader, growled: “If you do that again, I’ll rip your fucking lips off.”
“They’re a lot better at this game than those we have come up against down south,” said Parsley of the insurgents as he chewed on a fat cigar.
He should know. The paperweight next to his army-issue camp bed is the top of a rocket fired into the base last week. It landed metres from where he had taken cover, but it failed to go off.
“I couldn’t bloody believe it when I saw it,” he said.
“Welcome to the Dogwood Hilton,” reads a sign on the wall of probably the safest place in the camp.
Nobody else wanted the underground bunker when the Black Watch arrived at the former industrial complex. But the 11 members of the refuelling crew who now call it home spent three days clearing it of rubble. It doesn’t have hot running water, piles of white towels or king-sized beds, but the soldiers have done their best.
“We filled every spare little bit of space on the truck,” said Corporal Robert Smith (29), from Dundee.
“We bought a DVD player and a stereo, and darts, of course,” pointing to a board hanging on the wall.
For the men inside the camp, the insurgents remain an elusive enemy, firing rockets from the lush east bank of the Euphrates, a restricted zone under Saddam Hussein that was home to members of the well-trained Special Republican Guard.
For most of them, the only contact they will have with their shadowy foe will come in the form of the metre-long metal tubes similar to the one a bomb disposal officer attached wires to on Friday. After his retreat, a loud explosion sent a column of dust and smoke into the clear blue sky, a reminder, amid the boredom, of the danger the soldiers face.
“I never, ever, want to see this place again,” one soldier said, no doubt speaking for many. — Guardian Unlimited Â