THE last time we three had been together was in Iraq more than 20 years ago.

In the interregnum between then and our brief reunion in Glasgow at the weekend, mundane things like careers, marriages, divorces and children had got in the way. So when we sat down with the predictable glass in hand, we swung the lantern like never before.

One friend now lives on Macclesfield’s millionaire’s row, has Fergie as a neighbour, and runs his own PR firm for blue chip clients.

The second is a stuntman and special effects guy in film and television, dated Rosamund Pike, and commutes between Marbella and London.

But we quickly dismissed all that, got another round in and teleported ourselves back to Bridge Four and whatever happened to that guy who nearly got us all killed near the Basra canal. We reminisced and remembered those of our friends who did not come home.

PR man, perhaps bizarrely, escapes the stresses and strains of his fast-paced business life touring in a caravan.

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Stuntman is probably even more deaf than I, but tells great stories, like the time Pierce Brosnan bought him a pint while making ‘The Tailor of Panama.’ Me? I write.

We discussed things we would never tell our wives, our nightmares and flashbacks and how we hate sudden noise and how certain sounds and smells bring it all back.

We discussed PTSD and admitted that we probably all have some degree of it but how we are all too scared to go to the doctor and get a diagnosis.

Perhaps it was no surprise that, as one, we glared at those articles who come down for breakfast in a four star hotel in their pyjamas and slippers, those who put their feet on train seats and those who have their phones on loudspeaker.

And as one we agreed that no man should have a top knot if he wears glasses and no man should ever wear flipflops anywhere outwith a shower.

The world put to rights, there were laughs too as we remembered that time when, well, you had to be there.

And again it will be no surprise to learn that as we went our separate ways, we all agreed on something else; that while we had a hard time of it in Iraq being a small part of the operation that removed Saddam Hussein, it was nothing like the battlefield of today.

When we were soldiers once, and young, warfare was very different from today’s charnel house in Ukraine. We had some protection and could dial up all sorts of other assets to counter enemy fire.

The prospect of the horrific video game drone warfare we see every day as Russian and Ukrainian forces slug it out, was too futuristic, too science fictional and too nightmarish for us to ever contemplate.