Zaire, Central Africa 2 October 1985 14:27 hours

Davy had offloaded his 175 Yamaha and gone ahead to recce the valley. He'd be back soon, unless the rebels had caught him. We'd been training Mobutu's troops against these guys, and we knew that knitting baby bootees and collecting china thimbles wasn't high on their list of favourite hobbies.

When you're up against the kind of guys who routinely machete off an entire village's lips because one of the locals has been overheard saying something not nice about the president, you know it's time to check chamber.

Our four ancient, rusting Renault trucks were spread out and static just below the crest of the high ground. The drivers had killed their engines the moment we got here. It wasn't something you'd normally do with old wagons like these, in case they refused to fire up again, but we didn't have a whole lot of choice; the Zaireans had only been able to find us a couple of dozen jerry-cans of fuel at such short notice, and those engines drank like a Swede on a stag night.

The early-afternoon sun was relentless. So were the flies. The fuckers had found us within minutes and it took a never-ending Thai hand dance to keep them out of my face. I wiped sweat from my eyes with the corner of a red gingham tablecloth I'd ripped in half and draped over my head and shoulders. I'd put the other half to good use too: it covered the working parts of my GPMG.

I opened the top cover and let the belt of 7.62mm link drop out. I lifted the feed tray, peered into the empty chamber and smoothed away a few grains of sand with a finger. We'd been bouncing along dirt tracks all the way from Kinshasa, and even the high commissioner's table linen couldn't stop the stuff finding its way into every nook and cranny. It didn't matter that my nose and eyes were full of grit, but it would if it got into the working parts and the gun jammed at just the moment I needed it to go bang.