The squadron was scheduled to undertake a major operation in the next couple of days, and now we were hunting for a 1.missing container of stores. Some clerk in Portsmouth had screwed up on the cargo manifest and our vital laser target designators had ended up on the wrong ship. I was twenty years old, and the operation would be my first time under fire in a real war; so I was quite nervous about how I would perform in a major action.

A stench of diesel and avgas. The cavernous main hold was jammed with giant helicopters and massive crates holding spare engines for Harrier jump jets. Teams of RAF technicians - 'crabs' in our language - were labouring to bolt the rotors into place on a twin-engine Chinook. Andy sent Tom and Doug forward, and took me aft with him to check the lower vehicle deck. He purposely wanted to keep me apart from Tom - when the order to leave for the Falklands came through, Tom and I had been out drinking. We had ended up pissed in some stinker's house and missed the flight out to Ascension Island with the rest of the squadron, and had to catch a later plane - Andy hadn't forgiven me yet. A veteran of the Oman campaign, he sported the droopy tash and long hair of a seasoned SAS operator, and took no nonsense from anyone, officer or ranker.