Desert Rats recall fierce ‘heavy hammer’ fight to capture Basra 20 years on

A barrage of fire lit up the darkness as the British military’s ‘heavy hammer’ force prepared to roll into Iraq at the outset of the coalition’s mission to oust Saddam Hussein.  

The artillery bombardment shortly after midnight announced what is thought to have been the most formidable UK assembly of firepower ever put into the field up to that point.  

After crossing the border in the early hours of March 21, 2003, four British battlegroups led by hundreds of armoured vehicles advanced on the southern city of Basra ready to seize key objectives including multiple bridges, the airport and various enemy strong points.  

The Desert Rats engaged in fierce battles with the dictator’s Republican Guard, including in places where they were forced to dismount and advance on foot. 

Twenty years to the day that British troops took full control of the port city, the battle remains far from the world’s glare and defining image of Hussein’s statue being felled 275 miles north-west in Baghdad.

Major John Collicutt, of 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, has now made a film featuring the stories of some of those who served in the operation to ensure they are not consigned to history.

The officer, who was second in command of one of the battlegroups, is among those who can vividly remember the heat and fire of Operation Telic.  

Speaking of the sensations as he waited in Kuwait for the order to cross the border in his Warrior armoured vehicle, he said: ‘Just eight hours before we were due to cross we were told there was an Iraqi armoured division in our way, and we would have to fight our way across.

‘We had to change our plans in the space of 20 minutes. We went to the border to put in a fierce bombardment so the battlegroups could make their way over.

‘My recollection is of being stood in the turret of the vehicle while the artillery fired behind me with the hairs on the back of my neck being pulled out because the noise and the light was so intense.’ 

The bombardment and air strikes by US attack helicopters eliminated enemy targets on the road to Iraq’s second largest city, estimated to have had a population of around 1.5 million at the time.

American Marines were also involved in assisting the force in the early stages as oil wells set alight by Iraqi forces cast palls of smoke into the sky.

‘I’d been in the Army at that stage for 18 years,’ Major Collicutt said.

‘I’d been in a lot of training and a lot of operations in Northern Ireland, the Balkans and other places, but I don’t think I or anyone else in the battlegroup had been involved in the coordination of such a large amount of fire up to that point.  

‘We were designed to be the heavy hammer organisation crossing the border and onto Basra.  

‘We, the Fusiliers battlegroup, were intended to be the spine of the lead armoured brigade for the British Army, or the point of the spear if you like.

‘It had taken us 18 months to two years to get there and while we were excited we were focused and knew we would have to perform to our best abilities.’ 

As the Desert Rats advanced across no man’s land and into Basra, Iraqi troops in defensive positions opened up with weapons including tanks and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). The attack force also had to contend with torrential rain and mud as a storm interrupted the desert conditions. They received cover from US Cobra attack helicopters as they spent just over a fortnight probing their way into the city.

‘The Iraqi soldiers were very brave,’ Major Collicut said.

‘They used tanks, mortars, artillery and rockets but their equipment wasn’t as good and they weren’t as capable. We didn’t push into Basra straight away as we knew it would have been a much bloodier battle.

‘We used loudspeakers to give them a chance to go away and we showed them that we were a much more powerful force. My recollection is that everyone got on with their jobs in the most outstanding manner.’ 

Corporal Stephen Allbutt and Trooper David Clarke, both of the Queen’s Royal Lancers, would not see the end of the mission. They died in the advance on the city when their tank was accidentally hit by another British Challenger 2 as coalition troops engaged in multiple battles with Iraq forces.  

‘Losing anyone is terrible and the loss has stayed with me and with us all,’ Major Collicutt said.  

‘But we could of lost far more people if we’d not done all the things to make the Iraqis not want to fight.

‘It could have been far bloodier if we’d have rushed straight in.’ 

The veteran, who is now 58 and living in Cheshire, has recorded the recollections of British soldiers who took part in the battle, bringing many of the stories to light for the first time.  

At one point, a section commander silently infiltrated an enemy position, emerging from the house with a prisoner after the other enemy soldiers had fled from the back, only to be eliminated by covering fire.  

British soldiers also dealt with injured civilians, including children who were hurt by munitions, and helped deliver babies, despite instructions not to provide such assistance, Major Collicutt said.

A major instalment as his battlegroup in 1 (UK) Armoured Brigade advanced through the city was the seizure of a massive warehouse codenamed ‘breadbasket’ surrounded by marshlands and hillocks.  

A platoon of around 28 heavily-laden men got out of their vehicles a mile and a quarter away and advanced at pace before breaching the complex through a wall and occupying the buildings.  

Vehicles brought round to support the troops then came under fire from RPGs.

Chris Rees-Gay, platoon commander for the Fusiliers’ Z Company, tells in the film of how he came within the sights of an Iraqi T-55 tank. ‘We were in our Warriors and tanks were crashing into the city,’ he said.  

‘They were taking RPG and T-55 fire. Probably about a k away I saw a turret traverse towards us.

‘They were firing off rounds and I didn’t realise it at the time but my recuperator [heat exchanger] was broken. I got one round off and couldn’t fire any more. so then I was briefing the lads at the back to get them out of the vehicle. Flapping’s the wrong word, but I was sweating a little bit.

‘Fortunately Zero Bravo, the OC [officer commanding], had seen what was going on and steamed in past us and fired and destroyed the T-55.

‘That’s why I recorded it my diary as operation certain death. There’s that love again for the rumble of the Challenger 2, I have a special place in my heart for that sort of moment.’

With other coalition elements including the Black Watch, Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, Royal Tank Regiment and Royal Marines also fighting their way into the city, the enemy scattered with many of the combatants posing as civilians or turning into fedayeen militia. 

Another fatality came on April 6, a day before the city was fully captured, when Fusilier Kelan John Turrington was shot and killed in an assault on enemy trench.  

The 18-year-old was awarded a posthumous Mention in Despatches in recognition of his gallantry. By the following evening, the British troops were fully in control and left with the task of running a major city.

Royal Marines were pictured in the dictator’s opulent palaces as they occupied and swept the 18 riverside buildings for booby traps.

Major Collicut found himself at the battlegroup headquarters in the Shatt Al Arab Hotel in north Basra. There was no sense of triumphalism.  

‘Every day of that tour, even after we’d taken the city, there was a lot of gunfire which our soldiers would find themselves in the middle of,’ he said.

‘There was a lot of tribal score-settling and looting. We knew we’d knocked Saddam out but we didn’t feel in control of the city.  

‘We were left trying to work out where the business centre was, where the schools were, how many people were in the police force and how many had been in the Ba’ath party.

‘There were so many thorny questions and it was the British Army having to resolve those issues.’ 

Twenty years on from the US-led invasion, which was initially named ‘shock and awe’ by the Pentagon, Major Collicut believes his comrades did their best with the job they were given.  

‘It’s important to remember that as part of an international coalition the British decided to try and play a positive role,’ he said.

‘Whether the result was right or wrong, young men and women went at the country’s behest to deal with a really difficult situation. We did our best to organise the chaos we found and to hand it over to civilians.

‘A lot of men and women lost their lives in Iraq after going there to do the right thing and we should never forget that people from our country have gone out to protect our rights to go about our lives freely, to go shopping at TK Maxx and to speak freely, and do what we want to do.’ 

The fall of Hussein gave way to years of instability and fighting involving rival factions, with much of the violence taking place along sectarian lines.

The debate over whether the dictator’s regime possessed weapons of mass destruction, the justification for the invasion, also continues into the present.  

British troops left Basra in September 2007, with around 500 troops pulling back from the palace to the airport on the outskirts of the city. The following December, a bugler played at the base as a flag belonging to the 4 Rifles Regiment was lowered and replaced with one representing the new Iraqi government.  

The Fusiliers’ service is recognised through the Iraq 2003 battle honour, which was added to the Regimental Colour. The campaign is among those remembered at the newly-relocated Fusilier Museum in Warwick, where medals belonging to some of those who served with the infantry regiment in conflicts up to the 1948 Palestine war went on display this week.

Major Collicut, who now provides personal safety security advice, reflects on the comments of civilians in Basra when he returned to work for the oil industry in the city a decade on from the invasion.

‘I was training people who worked for the oil companies and at the end of our courses we would sit down for lunch and I would ask them about the huge debate in the UK over whether it was the wrong or right thing to do,’ he said.

‘To a person, man and woman, they would always say, “are you stupid, of course it was”. They all had horror stories from the time of the regime and they no longer had the risk of being pulled into a van and never seen again.

‘They would say life might not be good now, but we have freedoms and opportunities we didn’t have before. In the end, the way Iraq turned out is down to the politicians and the extent to which they engaged in nation-building.

‘As a Fusilier, as a soldier, all I can say is that every soldier who went there wanted to do some good and make a positive difference but in the end it is not for the military to determine the long-term political future of a nation.’ 

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