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We will move north then east into Kuwait and onto objective VARSITY where we’ll get a replen.

O Group points, 0730hrs, southeastern Iraq just west of the Kuwait border. This wasn’t just going to be ‘Free Kuwait’, as the stickers given to us had announced, this was going to be ‘Smash Iraq’. It’s in Iraq, past Basra, the main city in southeastern Iraq. As far as we knew there was no River Euphrates in Kuwait.

Our new limit of exploitation, Toby announced, was the River Euphrates. I had already torn off the parts of the map that we had already passed and thrust them into one of the bins on the side of the tank. New maps were issued to add to the tennis court of mapping folded up on my knees. We sat around Toby who had already been to Battlegroup Headquarters to receive his orders. This physical feature marked the border between Iraq and Kuwait and trailed south of the border into Saudi – the tri-border point. The Wadi had caught our imagination from when we had first heard of it before the ground war had started. Were we going to push into Kuwait or were we going to swing north into the teeth of the Republican Guard Force on our way to Basra or even Baghdad? The Iraq/Kuwait border was marked by what had come to appear to us as the almost mystical feature of the Wadi al Batin. What was planned next? We couldn’t be too far from the Iraqi/Kuwait border. An extract from the diary of Capt Tim Purbrick (17/21 Lancers)Īfter a hasty wash, shave and breakfast, I was ordered to Squadron HQ just a few metres away across the desert.