From Intel Rooms to Iraq | The Parallel Four: Pre-Deployment Chaos & Twickenham Pride

In this episode of The Parallel Four, the calm before the storm turns into full-blown chaos as the team prepares for the 2003 Iraq War. Inside the humming corridors of Chicksands, Vinka and Marlin drive the Intelligence Cell like a war room on overdrive — maps, photos, and caffeine everywhere — while Stephen and Johan push the troops through live-fire ranges, NBC drills, and battlefield medicine training.

From PowerPoint warfare to CS gas chambers, the Group ramps up for real operations in the Gulf. When deployment orders drop, it’s a mad scramble to Oman, where PsyOps takes centre stage — Safe Conduct Passes, leaflet drops, and radio broadcasts winning more hearts and minds than bullets ever could.

But it’s not all tension and training — there’s still room for pride and laughter. The team swaps desert dust for Twickenham turf, carrying the flag before England faces the All Blacks in front of 82,000 roaring fans.

Packed with true-to-life military detail, veteran humour, and a rare look behind the wire, this episode captures service life at full throttle — from war prep to rugby glory.

Transcript

The Group was shifting onto a war footing, and you could feel it in the corridors: conversations clipped shorter, boots striking the lino a little harder, laughter growing rarer by the day.

Marlin and I threw ourselves straight into the thick of it. The Int Cell became our battlefield—rows of desks stacked with maps, aerial photos, and reports, screens flickering with updates that aged by the hour. We were up to our elbows in intel, building target packs, updating threat assessments, and turning raw data into sharp-edged briefs that could make or break decisions.

The new lads under our charge didn’t stand a chance—stern stares, clipped instructions, and the occasional midnight, espresso-fuelled PowerPoint marathon kept them sharp. It was part Bletchley Park, part boot camp, with the two of us driving it like twin engines at full throttle.

Meanwhile, Johan and I were flat out getting the warfighters sharpened and sorted. The ranges were booked solid, magazines clattered full, and personal weapons tests rolled out with all the efficiency we could muster (helped along by the occasional bribe of a bacon sarnie). Every weapon system in the armoury got a workout—from pistols to GPMG's—and every man was reminded that “safety catch” isn’t just a polite suggestion.

We doubled down on battlefield medicine, too. A couple of combat medic courses were rammed into the schedule, because if Afghanistan had taught us anything, it’s that duct tape and hope aren’t valid medical treatments. First aid kits were gutted and rebuilt, CAT tourniquets practised until fingers ached, and more than one lad discovered that “buddy care” often meant being jabbed, jabbed again, and then bandaged like a badly wrapped Christmas present.

By the end, they could patch holes, plug leaks, and still look sharp in body armour—walking proof that sweat now saves blood later.

Unfortunately, the world outside our little Int cell bubble was anything but calm. Tensions with Iraq were climbing fast. On the news, President Bush and Tony Blair looked like they were playing some grim game of “Who Can Start a War First,” with Saddam Hussein as the dubious prize. Ships were already steaming toward the Gulf, battalions shuffled about like a deck of cards, and rumours spread faster than a clerk with weekend leave in sight.

To be fair, the Group had clocked this months before. There were already a few teams sat on their bergens, ready to go at the drop of a hat. Us four? We’d been mercifully shoved into the category marked “strategic teapot reserve.” Present, ready, and technically useful—just not at boiling point yet.

Back in the real world, there was no easing in gently—we were flat out preparing others for war. One of our regular gigs was heading down to Lydd & Hythe to brief deploying units as part of the OPTAG package. Our job? Spell out what they’d face in-theatre, how our PsyOps teams slotted into the bigger machine, and why they should pay attention to that dodgy-looking billboard with three misspellings and a satellite dish bolted on top.

We kept it straight, no death-by-PowerPoint. “If you see it, report it. If you think it’s dodgy, report it. And if you ain’t sure—guess what? Report it anyway.” Simple enough, right? Half the lads stared at us like we’d just walked in wearin’ wizard robes, the other half just wanted the brief over so they could get back to their brews. Can’t blame ’em. No one signs up to the infantry dreamin’ about passin’ leaflets to blokes with megaphones.

Still, most of them got it. Once they realised we weren’t about to confiscate their rifles or make them read the small print of the Geneva Convention, they leaned in. By the end of each session we had squads nodding along, officers scribbling notes, and the occasional Lance Jack asking if he could have our job because it “looked cushy.”

Course, cushy ain’t the word I’d use. Back at our own end we were rampin’ up training for the Group—especially the poor sods earmarked for the first wave. Saddam’s chemical toys were the bogeyman of the hour, so we dragged everyone through their NBC paces. Gas chamber drills, CS tests, detection kit practice, and the fine art of stabbin’ yourself in the thigh with an autoinjector—without actually meanin’ to.

The mantra was simple: mask in nine seconds, don’t panic, and if in doubt, jab first, apologise later. If there’s a quicker way to sober a squaddie up than five seconds in a CS-filled shed, I’ve yet to see it. Swagger vanished in an instant, replaced by streaming eyes, snot fountains, and frantic fumbling for decon wipes.

But by the end of the week, they had it. Gas proofed, muscle-memorised, and as ready as anyone ever gets for a dust-swept, unpredictable war zone. It weren’t pretty, but it worked.

Meanwhile, the Int Cell was hummin’ like a dodgy generator. Hot drops were comin’ in from a small forward team already out there, lads feedin’ back updates faster than a Tommy on free Wi-Fi. One minute we’d get a sketchy line about a convoy, the next a grid reference for a suspected ammo dump, then some pearl like “Saddam’s cousin’s barber’s nephew reckons he’s seen…” You couldn’t make half of it up—but it was gold once the analysts stitched it all together.

The place ran on it like jet fuel. Maps layered with multicoloured arrows, whiteboards sagging under acronyms, phones never still. It looked less like an Int Cell and more like Mission Control—if NASA had PS2 chairs, cold mugs of tea, and staff who used “alright?” as both greeting and farewell.

Messy, noisy, borderline chaos—but somehow reassuring. Because when the machine was turning like that, you knew what was coming next.

If you’d walked in then, you might’ve thought you’d stumbled onto some caffeinated academic boot camp. Marlin and I ran it like a tag team of Nordic Valkyries—one minute hunched over satellite imagery with the red pen of doom, the next barking at some poor junior who’d dared confuse Basra with Basrah. Razor-sharp analysis, zero tolerance for nonsense. It kept the tempo right where it needed to be.

I stuck me head in one afternoon and it looked like they were orchestratin’ a full-blown map-fest. Papers everywhere, mugs balanced on the edges of filing cabinets, radios squawkin’ like parrots on payday. Vinka didn’t even glance up—just shoved a scribbled note into my hand. “Tell your lot if they can’t spell the town they’re deployin’ to, they don’t deserve to get there.” Then she turned back to grillin’ some poor lance jack who looked like he’d rather crawl into a CS chamber than mislabel another target folder.

Yes, it was chaos. But it was our chaos. Out of the noise, the coffee fumes, and the endless acronyms, a picture was forming. Something the planners could actually use. That was the magic of the Int Cell: take scraps and whispers, stitch them into gold dust, and do it faster than the rest of the Group could load a magazine.

Back at HQ, the daily battle rhythm was so tight you could set your watch by it. Everyone through the door by 0730 (except that one lad forever blamin’ traffic on the A1), then straight to the day’s orders—checkin’ if the world had tipped on its head overnight. After that it was kit prep, PowerPoint wranglin’, or endless coffee runs until the real action kicked off at 1000 sharp: the sitrep.

Picture it—thirty-odd grown adults, all pretendin’ not to be welded to their mugs of tea, shufflin’ into the briefing room like schoolkids late for assembly. Vinka or Marlin would be up front, clicker in hand, radiatin’ that “don’t-even-think-about-yawnin’” energy.

What followed was twenty minutes of pure theatre: maps projected in glorious 1990s PowerPoint clip-art, satellite images that looked like someone had sneezed on the lens, and updates delivered with the tone of a BBC announcer wrapped in the doom of a 1970s public information film.

Bleak when it needed to be, brisk always, and wrapped before anyone’s brew went cold. By the end we were clear on two things: Saddam wasn’t going to make life easy, and if you asked a daft question, you’d get skewered quicker than a sausage at a summer barbecue.

And then came the call: two teams to deploy to Oman within twenty-four hours. That was the moment the penny dropped. No more drills, no more prep for the sake of prep. The shift was sudden and absolute—PowerPoint to live ammo in a single breath.

The lads moved like clockwork—grab your bergen, check your gas mask actually fits, don’t forget your mug, and if you do, nick one from the cookhouse. The Int Cell was hummin’, last-minute packs shoved out the door, even the MT lot found a second gear. Someone muttered it felt like the world’s worst episode of Challenge Anneka—only with sand, Scuds, and a serious lack of Lycra.

Three days later, boots hit tarmac in Muscat. Officially, it was the Forward Mounting Base. Unofficially? A halfway house where you could still buy a Cornetto while the desert sun smacked you in the face. We called it Forward-ish. Not quite the sharp end, but you could smell it from there.

The weeks that followed were classic military chaos, wrapped in admin nightmares. Our lads had touched down in Muscat lookin’ like a walkin’ advert—berets shaped to perfection, boots shiny enough to do your shave in, kit squared away like a recruiting poster. And what did they find? No one had told the sponsor units they were comin’. They were, quite literally, gate-crashin’ their own war.

So instead of cracking on, they sat. And waited. And stewed. Days blurred into one another: endless roll calls, half-baked briefs, and the slow shuffle of military admin that felt like purgatory with a parade square. These were grown men, ready to run PsyOps at the sharp end, reduced to being herded around airfields like lost luggage.

The frustration was thick enough to chew. Like sittin’ strapped in a race car, engine revvin’, helmet on, only to be told to leave it in neutral. No roar off the grid, just a lot of noise and no movement.

Eventually, after enough raised voices to shake the Omani ceiling tiles, someone senior finally twigged that these “mystery teams” weren’t freeloaders out to pinch the ice cream ration. And just like that, chaos flipped to go-time. Iraq started lobbin’ missiles, alarms went off like the world’s worst disco, and blokes scrambled into NBC suits with all the elegance of sausage rolls bein’ wrapped in clingfilm.

Amid the mayhem, our lads got stuck straight in. Shoulder-to-shoulder with the Americans, they churned out millions of Safe Conduct Passes—leaflets fluttering over Iraqi positions like wartime confetti. Not bad for a bunch who’d spent their first fortnight treated like extras in the wrong film.

Then, once the war lurched into gear and the Coalition rolled into Iraq like the world’s biggest sponsored off-road rally, the prisoners started streamin’ in. Not just the half-starved conscripts who’d clearly been dragooned into Saddam’s circus, but blokes with half-decent kit and enough rank on their shoulders to know better.

The best part? A staggering number of them were clutching our PsyOps leaflets like golden tickets to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory—only the prize wasn’t everlasting gobstoppers. It was not being shelled into next week. In questioning, plenty admitted it was those very slips of paper that tipped the balance. Forget the tanks, the airstrikes, the endless convoys of armour—what made them fold was the promise of hot food, clean water, and the chance to keep breathing.

Result! PsyOps: 1. Hostile Intentions: 0. Who’d have thought a few carefully chosen words, printed on cheap paper and chucked out the back of a C-130, could do what battalions of steel and firepower couldn’t? Hearts and minds in action: more paper cuts, fewer bullet holes. Not bad for a bunch of blokes who, a fortnight earlier, were treated like spare furniture in Muscat.

And it wasn’t just the leaflets. We had the full double act running. By night, Safe Conduct Passes fluttered down like confetti at a very grim wedding. By day, the airwaves hummed with our radio broadcasts—pumped out from more kit than the BBC World Service on steroids. Together, it was a proper one-two punch: paper in their hands, words in their ears.

And the magic bit? It worked. Prisoners didn’t just wave the leaflets—they quoted the broadcasts back at us. “Safe passage… good treatment… food and water.” Some even rattled it off like they were orderin’ lunch.

That was the beauty of it. You didn’t have to believe the Coalition could steamroll you into dust—you just had to want what we were offering more than what Saddam was flogging. Simple, stark, and devastatingly effective.

The Americans loved it, of course. To them, it was proof that “psywar” wasn’t just some quirky British hobby involving posters, loudhailers, and too much stationery—it was battlefield leverage. To us, it was vindication. All those hours of battling printers, shouting down doubters, and drinkin’ coffee strong enough to strip paint had finally paid off.

“…Not bad for the spare furniture from Muscat, eh?”

I gave him that smug little half-smile I save for moments of polite evisceration. “You know, I do love the look on a tank commander’s face when the same blokes he swore he’d have to fight tooth and nail come wandering up, leaflet in hand, practically quoting our broadcasts word for word. All those years of ‘psy-what?’ and ‘waste of time, that lot’ suddenly turned into ‘oh, maybe the funny leaflets and funny accents do work after all.’”

I leaned back, positively glowing. “Face it, boys. Your big shiny toys are very nice, but in the end it was our words, not your shells, that tipped them over. Hearts and minds. Paper over powder. You can thank us later.”

The room went quiet. Johan just muttered into his tea, “She’ll be dining out on that forever.” He wasn’t wrong.

The “war-war” bit rattled past in 26 days—a blink in military time, barely long enough for the rations to turn rubbery. But the “peace” part? That stretched out like an endless pub quiz: no answers, too many rounds, and everyone shouting over each other.

Our Group pushed two teams forward to Basra Airport HQ to stand up a PSE—Psyops Support Element—while the rest of us held the fort at Chicksands, sharpening the next lot who’d rotate once Divisional HQ finished its game of musical chairs.

The planning was pure theatre: maps plastered to walls, spreadsheets breeding like rabbits, and full-blown arguments over who’d packed the printer cables. (Spoiler: no one had.) You could almost hear the military machine grinding forward, all squeaks, groans, and stubborn gears.

I couldn’t resist summing it up with a little sting. “Only the British Army could win a war in under a month and then spend twice as long arguing over stationery.”

No one argued. Mostly ’cause they knew she was right.

The Rip finally came round in July ’03, and the incoming team slotted into Basra like they’d been born there. Our first two teams staggered back to the UK—dustier, grumpier, and desperate for a brew, a debrief, and a proper lie-in. Naturally, they got two out of three.

But the wheel never stops. By November, the next team was packed, checked, and rechecked—because someone always forgets their bergen lid—and this time it was our turn. Us four, plus a handful of fresh faces keen to find out what all the fuss was about.

We even dusted off our Arabic phrasebooks, practising pleasantries in the evenings and trying desperately not to confuse “more tea, please” with “your goat smells suspicious.”

I couldn’t resist a final dig: “Only the British Army could prep for war with flip charts, phrasebooks, and a healthy fear of livestock.”

Didn’t get an argument. Mostly laughter. And maybe a touch of nerves.

Next we set off early dressed in clean combats and polished boots for Twickenham full of excitement at the thought of being on hallowed turf once again.

The place was already humming hours before kick-off — a sea of white shirts, pints, and painted faces rolling through the turnstiles. Brass bands warming up outside, TV crews jostling for position, and that unmistakable smell of steak rolls and damp scarves in the November air. You could feel it — that electric mix of pride and pint-fueled patriotism that only Twickenham manages to bottle.

As we formed up in the tunnel, the noise hit a different level — the kind that rattles your ribs and makes your pulse sync with the drums. The turf gleamed under the floodlights, perfect stripes like someone had ironed the grass. The stadium announcer’s voice boomed out the build-up, and suddenly we weren’t just soldiers anymore — we were part of the show. Every step onto that pitch felt choreographed by history itself.

When the teams ran out, the place erupted. Black jerseys, white shirts, flags everywhere. You could barely hear the band strike up over the roar. The haka hit like a thunderclap — all sinew, sweat, and defiance — and there we were on the touchline, hearts pounding, trying not to grin like idiots.

By the time the anthem rolled, the crowd was one voice — 82,000 people standing shoulder-to-shoulder, belting it out like their lives depended on it. For a few glorious minutes, the world shrank to that patch of grass. No desert heat, no deployment looming — just pride, noise, and the simple joy of belonging to something bigger than yourself.

When the formalities were done and we’d marched off the pitch, we didn’t stray far — just up into the stands where a section had been roped off for us. From there, it was pure theatre. The first whistle blew and the place went ballistic. Every pass, every tackle, every whistle drew a roar that rolled like thunder. You could almost taste the tension — pint cups sloshing, flags waving, the crowd swaying as one giant living thing.

England drew first blood, and the stadium just about lifted off its foundations. Strangers were hugging, beer flying, voices cracking. Even the most hardened of us were swept up in it — proper goosebumps stuff. The All Blacks hit back, of course, moving with that eerie precision of a machine built for chaos. But England weren’t rolling over. By halftime, our voices were hoarse and our hands stung from clapping.

The second half was war without bullets — bodies on the line, mud flying, tackles you could feel in your teeth. We shouted ourselves hoarse, riding every surge, every near-miss, until the final whistle split the night. Win or lose, it didn’t matter — the crowd roared like they’d witnessed something sacred. For a few minutes, no one wanted to leave.

Eventually, we spilled out into the cold London evening, the buzz still fizzing through us. Twickenham Road was a river of red and white scarves, car horns blaring, fans belting out “Swing Low” like a second anthem. We bundled into the minibus, still grinning, uniforms now a patchwork of creases and ketchup stains.

Someone passed round a bag of chips; someone else cracked open a can. We’d started the day as a display team, but by the time we hit the motorway, we were just a bunch of mates riding the high of one hell of a day. The war, the desert, the uncertainty — it all felt a million miles away. For that night at least, life was just rugby, laughter, and the sweet hum of the road home.

Dear Vinka,

I just have to tell you how well Tim has settled here in Sweden — he’s like a different man. He’s landed a job driving one of those enormous 24-metre trucks from Uddevalla all the way across to Södertälje, just outside Stockholm. Twice a week he does the run: off on Monday, back Tuesday, then out again Wednesday and home Thursday night ready for the weekend. It’s a proper rhythm, and he’s thriving on it.

Sometimes I ride along with him, and honestly, it feels like a mini-holiday. Perched up in that big cab, watching forests, lakes, and half of Sweden roll past the window… we stop for coffee, laugh at the dodgy overnight stops, and it almost feels like old times when everything was an adventure.

And here’s the best bit — he’s not only loving it, and he’s on a very good wage. You should see the grin on his face when he comes home, proud as punch, smelling of diesel but happy as anything. He even polishes the truck like it’s a classic car. Honestly, Vinka, it suits him. Steady work, good money, and weekends free for us — I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so content.

With love...

Petra...

Dear Petra,

Your letter made me smile from start to finish. I could picture you sat up in that great big cab, perched like a queen while Tim plays king of the road. I’m so pleased he’s found something that suits him — loving the work and being paid properly for it, well, that’s more than most people can say. You’ve both earned a bit of steady happiness, and I can hear it between every line you wrote.

As for us… well, things are about to get busier again. Orders have come down, and we’ll be off to Iraq soon. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of each other — we always do. Still, you can imagine how the prep looks: kit piled everywhere, endless briefs, and Stephen muttering about “bloody sand getting into everything” before we’ve even left England.

Reading about you and Tim gave me a lift, Petra. Hold onto that rhythm you’ve found together. And when we’re back, I’ll expect Tim to take me on a tour in that shiny lorry of his — provided he promises not to polish it more than he talks to me.

With all my love...

Vinka