The Jelltex Report

On Thursday 2nd January 2003, I, like all my colleagues working in the bomb dump at RAF Coltishall, reported for duty after the Christmas break. I was duty armourer, a job which involved driving around on errands, and was seen as a skive, so I was in good mood. It was the start of a new year, I had several trips planned back to the US, where I had friends in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, and maybe even move there if things in the RAF didn't work out.

However, soon after we all had drunk the first brew in the tea bar, I along with Dave Boxhall, we called into the Flight Sergeant's office. We were told that the RAF was planning for war, and being experienced we were selected to go out in the first wave with the aircraft; report to stores to collect kit, then go back to your rooms to pack, but from tomorrow, be prepared to deploy.

I went to stores, and found that already they were running out of supplies: just one NBC suit each, one "war-shot" respirator canister and so on, with the promise that the rest of what we needed would "be in theatre", or it would be waiting for us in Turkey or wherever we would be deploying to. Later in the coming months, I remember people having to go to stores and being given just a pair of NBC outer gloves, as that was all that was left in stock; it was a joke.

I went to the Army and Navy surplus stores in Lowestoft and spent £120 on things I knew I would need, just to be able to make life bearable, as this stuff, like head torches, washing lines and so on was not in kitting. A poor state of affairs when we get so little and yet our American friends get everything they need.

This came out of the blue for me, I mean I was well read and up with current affairs; I know that Bush was sabre-rattling, but Iraq was done up tightly, they couldn't fart without us knowing thank's to the two no-fly zones. And yet we were to prepare for war. In the media and in the House of Commons, the case was put ever stronger for war by Tony Blair, and yet I knew that plans were accelerating for us in the RAF.

Once March came round, we were told we were on "no-notice" to deploy, meaning there would be on 24 hour warning, just the call and we would have to go.

In the end, we were on notice to move for 69 days; rumours came and went as to whether we were going to deploy at all. Turns out that Turkey did not want to has NATO aircraft based on it's territory, and so was refusing all demands and offers to let our planes in. Then there was the chance that once the invasion began, we would be flown in to work from a captured Iraqi airfield. We had field training, how to use the cooking stoves, make a meal, and do some serious NBC training. It was all now very real. We did training on our very new laser-guided bombs, which we had not seen before, as deployments had been taken off us at Colt by another base, and they had done all the training with the new kit, and now we had half a day to train before we were going to war and doing this stuff for real.

And then the test kit didn't work, so it was all talked through, and we felt cheated. It would have been funny if it wasn't so serious.

Then we had to go to the Medical Centre for jabs. Jabs for anthrax.

Now, I was quite well read, and coming after the the attack in Washington where people had died from exposure to spores, I asked questions, and when the doctor would not give us straight answers, and then revealed that the full course would take 6 months until we had full protection, and we were due to fly out in two days; we all refused to take the jabs.

In the end, Turkey refused to allow us to use their bases, this was because they were waging their own war against the Kurds, and rightly or wrongly were concerned that such a war might make a Kurdish homeland come about. And so we waited and waited to fly out. Once the invasion began, there was a chance we might deploy to an Iraqi base, but an officers wife mentioned it, and that had to be accepted and then denied it was going to happen, and in the end it petered out.

I was against the war from the start, and nothing that has emerged in the years following has changed my mind. On my resettlement course, I met an NBC specialist from the Army who said he went over the boarder on the first night of the war, and was given just ten rounds of ammunition to go to war with. They would have to beg more from our American friends. Over the course of the war it got so bad the American nicknamed us "The Borrowers". Says it all, really.

On Wednesday the Chilcot Report was published, and had measured but harsh words for many aspects of the war, its preparation and aftermath. The legal case wasn't really made, which is pretty much what we thought, but the Government and media cast all doubters pretty much as traitors. Of course they all changed their tune this week, calling Blair a criminal, but you can look for yourself.

In the end I feel even more vindicated I have felt since; with the complete failure to prepare for after the invasion and the descent into chaos. Of course, don't make me feel better about the hundreds of thousands of people who died, or were injured or displaced; all of them can be traced back to the decision to invade, and the end of Western values that act symbolises. Illegal invasions, torture, rendition, and all for what? A void in a country that fed the extremists and then spread to the rest of the Middle East.

I have no idea how Blair is able to sleep, able to live with what he has done. You sell your soul to the devil, and this is what happens. And then they made him a Middle East PEACE Envoy.

One hopes this should kill the idea that you can bomb a country to peace and stability, but then the hawks will win out time after time. They always do, and ordinary people pay the price. With their lives and families and homes.