The human shields have begun their retreat back to Britian. Others remain and here is a glimpse at the cast of characters. Darwin at its finest?

In Baghdad, Ken came into his own. Dressed in a thick, grey dishdash, he took to ambushing me in the Andalus corridors to brief me on his latest soundbites. "Dark forces have worked against me," he said, "but I have survived. My mission is hard core, in-your-face activism."

O'Keefe's nemesis was Joe Letts, 52, a former television cameraman from Dorset and the owner of the two red buses. Dressed in his fawn duffle coat and a ragged, bright jersey, the Glastonbury Festival regular devoted his unswaying optimism to propelling the convoy to Baghdad regardless of O'Keefe's absence.

"We will stop the war," he would tell me cheerfully everyday. "If that doesn't happen, I'm taking my buses back to London - with a detour via the vineyards of Lebanon."