Christmas In Basra

After 27 years in the Navy I had finally got to deploy on an operational tour (not including my time on 'bombers'. I had been given desert combats, ID tags, a gun and everything. All the Booties and modern day MAs will be giving a big yawn at this but I had missed every scrap since 1973 through no fault of my own and I really wanted to do this; Mrs C less so.

We landed at Basra airport late at night on 11 December in a charter aircraft and with the aircraft being only about a third full we could all have a second (a third for some) in-flight meal and stretch out over 3 seats. As we walked across the apron in the 'a-lot-warmer-than-Brize-Norton' night air, I could see that this was a modern airport which had been abandoned by the builders at the 65% complete point. After we received an induction on some dos and don'ts, I was met by a TA RAMC MSO Captain, who got me into the Headquarters and showed me where I was to sleep for the first night - an inner office with no air conditioning and holes beaten into the walls to the next offices.

After a sweaty few hours sleep, it was through the swing doors into the headquarters of HQ Multinational Division (South East) (HQ MND (SE)). What I actually walked into was a very large, windowless airport terminal with subdued lighting. The place was full of PCs, desks, wiring looms, desert DPM, carpet and pongoes of many nationalities. Admittedly there was a good handful of Crabs, but my presence increased the RN presence by a staggering 33%, and the Submarine Service presence by 100%.I was shown where everything was and promptly forgot, and met the J4 Med bunch with which I would be working, including a great Dutch Major Theo van der Zanden, and Commander Medical, Colonel Ewan Carmichael, an Army dentist and now Director General Army Medical Services as a Major General. I was allocated my tent which I shared with 3 Crabs..er..RAF officers, 2 Italians and a US Army officer, and made myself at home.

Two days into the tour and I was extended an invitation to go into Basra city with Theo and I duly accepted. With body armour and weapon in place, I walked up to the left hand side of the Land Rover Discovery, realised that it was left-hand drive and moved to the right hand side. Theo stopped that and told me I was driving. So on my first ever trip to Basra I'm driving a left-hand drive automatic 4x4, mostly on the left hand side of the road (Iraqi lorry drivers drive their lorries using a random number generator to determine which side of the road to to drive on any particular day), with a pistol under my left thigh, and learning the drills for driving under bridges or when slowing down in the city.

Christmas decorations were already being put up
when I arrived and it wasn't long before the whole of the terminal..--.the headquarters was festooned with the usual garlands baubles, cards and figurines. The joy of having the Italians with us was that they provided panetonne. Big ones. Always nice to grab a chunk when getting coffee (Douwe Egberts courtesy of our Dutch chums). Daily working routine was 0800 - 2000, except for Sundays when it was brunch and a 1000 start and we would be working Sunday routine on Christmas day; otherwise, all other activities such as patrols in the city or of the airfield perimeter didn't change. As Christmas day approached our gift boxes from major companies back home arrived, and the usual surge in cards and personal gift boxes happened in Iraq as well. On Christmas Eve, there was to be a Midnight mass in the main hall of the airport. Many attended, and so did the press. It all seemed a little unusual but went well. When one of the patrols returned they came into the hall and were photographed in all their kit holding candles by the Christmas tree. I took a picture but my little Nokia 7250 phone wasn't really up to the job.

After the service, it was on with the body armour and a solitary walk back to the tent. As I walked past the overhead road gantries with their bilingual signs and the modern,air traffic control tower with its Christmassy greeting, I briefly pondered on my situation, about my family back home, knowing they would be missing me, and how ever so slightly bizarre the whole thing seemed. Christmas Day with its welcome lie-in arrived and once at work and after the daily routines had been done, it was into the gift boxes and enjoying the Christmas spirit. Each of the corporate boxes contained a red hat of some description and I still have mine.

Cmdr Med had been on a shopping trip and he had bought everyone in the section a shemagh, and after some swift instruction, we all donned them. The day was spent doing not much at all, other than chatting, swapping jokes and messages, and occasionally taking updates from the outlying units. There was a surprisingly good selection of Christmas nibbles, and some....er.. 'blackcurrant juice' had also been obtained. A Christmas film was watched on a laptop; a pirate copy of Finding Nemo, if I recall -$2 in Kuwait. Christmas dinner was pretty damned good although I think the Iraqi kitchen staff and cleaners were all pretty bemused by it all.


And then, it was all over. The panettone lasted  few more days. Life continued to be unpleasant in Al Amarah. The decorations came down. And nothing much had really changed.

This piece originally appeared in 'Doc RN' the magazine of the Royal Naval Medical Branch and Sick Berth Staffs Association