Free The Sixteen by John Urwin

one of our own guys in the dark, as we knew there had to be hundreds of us scattered all around but couldn’t see a thing. Above the noise of the intermittent gunfire, officers and sergeants could be heard shouting.
    ‘Stay where you are, lads, and keep your heads down!’
    ‘Keep under cover and don’t move.’
    ‘What’s he on about, “don’t move”? I couldn’t bloody move if I wanted too, I’m so scared!’ one of the lads crouched next to me grumbled. ‘And even if I could where the bleedin’ hell would I move to, for Chrissake?’
    ‘Watch where you put your hands, there’s bloody snakes and things around here!’ another nearby voice mumbled.
    ‘Oh Gawd! Bullets and snakes!’ the first lad moaned. ‘That’s all I bloody need!’
    ‘Sarge! Sarge!’ I shouted. ‘There’s someone in the back of our truck, I think he’s been hit and he’s in a bad way, he needs help!’
    I knew the sergeant had heard my shout for help as he instantly began to call out for a medic. I wondered how the lad in the truck was doing; with all that blood around, I thought he might be dead.
    The sky ahead and above us flashed with gunfire and I guessed that the snipers must be somewhere on the hilltop in front of us. Some of our guys were firing back, as there had been occasionalflashes, followed by the loud crack of gunfire, further along the hillside.
    It seemed as though we lay there for hours and as dawn broke, we began to see our surroundings more clearly. Like much of the island, the area was mainly barren and rocky with some scrub and a few thorny bushes. As the light increased, the ‘alien’ landscape became more visible.
    On a hilltop in front of us, silhouetted against the gradually lightening sky, we saw four or five terrorists, now captured, being marched down the hillside towards us, their hands above their heads. They had managed to keep several hundred British troops pinned down for hours in the darkness. What became even more apparent as it grew lighter, was the fact that British soldiers had been surrounding their position the whole time!
    We were given orders to get back into the trucks as quickly as possible and clambering back into ours I saw the large pool of blood on the floor, where the lad who’d been shot had fallen. Obviously, during the night, the medics had somehow been able to get to him and move him to a safer place.
    ‘Let that be a lesson to you all,’ the sergeant warned us. ‘Don’t underestimate these bastards. They’re well armed, well trained and bloody determined. Soldiers, women, kids – they don’t give a shit. So keep well away from them and watch your backs at all times! This isn’t a bleedin’ holiday camp!’
    As the trucks moved off we all sat quietly, trying not to look at one another or at the pool of blood that now stained the truck floor, and no one spoke or asked where the injured man was. Any thoughts we may have had of being on a ‘paradise island’ had been quickly dispelled on that very first night, as the full reality of the situation hit us all. This was to be no holiday in the sun!
    I later discovered that the young lad who’d been shot waseventually shipped back to England. Apparently, the bullet had entered his left shoulder, travelled along and through his body to finally exit from his chest on the right-hand side, causing considerable internal damage. The rumour around the camp was that he’d lost the use of his right arm due to his injuries.
    We were stunned when we arrived at our ‘camp’ – it was virtually non-existent! We’d had to make it ourselves over the next couple of weeks from the surrounding, mainly barren area, and were kept busy putting up tents, organising cooking facilities, digging latrines and eventually erecting a perimeter fence.
    The camp, in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by barbed wire, looked more like a prison. There were no towns in the near vicinity and, to begin with, none of us had the remotest idea of where